And the winner is...

So, for my GQPC class I've decided to take a good, hard look at the 1969 St. Louis Housing Authority tenant strike. I think. It all depends on the archival material I can find - there seem to be several folders at the WHMC labeled "Rent Strike, 1969," but that doesn't guarantee anything. Sometimes you open a box, take out a nice fat folder, and despite the label on the tab the contents have absolutely nothing to do with what you're looking for. Sometimes that's a good thing, increasing the prongs of your research and improving the scope of your work. Sometimes it's just an hour paging through someone's doodles. But all of that is what makes this kind of research so damned interesting.

There are a few monographs written about tenant movements, mostly focusing on the long history of tenant uprisings in New York City, and George Lipsitz (*heart*) has written one about Ivory Perry, the leader of the St. Louis strike. What I'll be looking for, however, is the role that women played in St. Louis - typically, women play a big role in tenant movements, even if they don't get to be "the leader." As much as I love Lipsitz, I have a hunch that there were many, many women behind (or in front of, guiding) Perry in his leadership. I hope to use the St. Louis case to illustrate why women took such roles (that much is documented for many strikes in NYC) and why their leadership was not recognized or affirmed. Maybe I won't find any of that and I'll have to revise my thesis. Which won't be good since I won't be left with much of a gender-focused article. Which is fine, just not for this class.

Also, I've decided to make a presentation in that class about Sally Mann's photographs in Immediate Family. They're nude photos of her kids lazing around, running, playing in mud, swimming, and all other sorts of naturally kid-like behavior on their rural property. Beautiful, haunting photos that have induced some to dub Mann a child pornographer. Not so, I contend. At least, not any more than art nudes of adults are pornographic. Hardly, I contend. I intend to explore why the images of nude girls are automatically sexualized, how some photos of her daughters trying to look alluring are patently sexy and why the daughters would have posed themselves with come-hither body language, and why this all bothers us so much. They're just kids being kids. Then again, if anyone should know about the power of re-presentation, its a cultural studies PhD student. So Mann's decisions to show her kids as she did also deserves examination. All of this is sure to make some of my cohort squirm in their seminar chairs.