Two Scoops

I just saw a review on H-Net (which, for those who don't know, is an academic email discussion list/news clearinghouse) of a book by a senior scholar in my field. This person's new book is about the topic I wanted to write about when I applied to grad school! If I'd been writing my dissertation about that same topic right now, I'd be feeling pretty darn bad—not only because I'd have been totally scooped, but also because the ever-so-politely-worded review made it sound like this person didn't do a massive amount of research. I would have kept writing my dissertation, only I might have had to pitch it completely differently. And when I went in for job interviews (presuming I got interviews), I'd have to explain how my work differs completely from Professor Senior Scholar's, without making it sound like I think Professor S.S. is a moron. (Those of you who know me know that I have put my foot in it more than once.) Actually, I will have to do this anyway. You always have to describe your "intervention into the literature" but be respectful about it. But I think I will feel less defensive.

Right now I feel fortunate to have been blessed with the gifts of ambivalence and indecision. I got to grad school convinced I would write about this topic, but an offhand remark by a beloved faculty member made me change my mind. Then I came up with topic B, which would have kicked a lot of ass on the job market but which I would have hated writing. If I'd chosen topic B, I would have been mired in misery, making it less likely I'd ever finish grad school. Topic C is a better fit, although there is another historian working on the same topic and a literary study was published on it a year ago. But I feel much more confident about it, mainly because I have a network of spies who have told me what this person's interpretation is, and we have completely different takes on the topic, different sources, and different writing abilities. OK, the latter is an assumption based on my reading of this person's first book. But I think this might be a counterscoop! This person probably has a network of spies too, and these spies might be reporting that a grad student is working on a similar project. I doubt this person will feel threatened by me, but in my dreams this person contacts me about doing a panel or some such collaborative activity in order to preempt me. What I am wondering is if I should present any conference papers or try to publish an article based on my dissertation research. That way I might get counter-counterscooped. Ah, academic politics.

Am I fooling myself?

I Am Spartacus!

Vgirl and I had a conversation recently.

Vgirl: If my job is like being on a pirate ship, what's yours like?

CheeseQuest: Remember the gladiator school in Spartacus?

This is by way of apology for being so quiet lately. Three things have gotten in the way of my blog postings. One is that I am still learning to fend off deadly triton attacks at my new job. The second is that I've been reading the sources I've found instead of trying to find them, so the rare-books-room adventures have dried up. (But look for a new adventure in early November.) Third, I've gotten sucked into Facebook, which (along with Twitter) is going to kill the blogs, I think. As I face the prospect of writing my dissertation I haven't been sure of what to post, since most grad student blogs get somewhat duller and a lot more angsty once the research is done.

I should say that I haven't been hit by the angst yet, but I think it's a-creeping up on me. I've been trying to block out my schedule a week ahead of time and have found that this is somewhere east of pointless because I have no idea how long something will take before I start doing it—erp, make that before it's done.

So here's to Labor Day: I'm thinking of it as the last day I get to ponder what's ahead without doing anything about it. I dedicate this blog post to Kirk Douglas in Spartacus, by all means the guy I would follow into battle against our imperialist, slave-owning Roman oppressors. To my fellow graduate students: keep telling yourself "I am Spartacus!" Stand together, and avoid the flaming logs.

The Girl in the Street

"Mary is an arrogant, aggressive child who makes her way by force. She plays with anyone who happens to be on the street."

"Mary" was born about 1930, "in an eastern city with a population of about a quarter million." She was four years old when Virginia Boggess, a student at the Smith College School of Social Work, studied her and her family for a 1935 thesis titled "Some Factors Accounting for the Variation in the Social Adjustment of Children Living in a Tenement Area." (In those days you didn't have to come up with a belabored pun or some variation of "Transgressing the Boundaries" for your thesis title.) "Mary's" Portuguese-American, Catholic family lived in a "first-floor flat, unattractive and untidy." The family was on the dole; the mother (age 25) had had at least two abortions. (And kids, don't believe the hype that abortions were rare before Roe, or accessible only to rich women. Social-work and medical literature are full of women who had them.) The mother "feels imposed upon because she has to care for her sister's children, and she does not like children."

Virginia Boggess judged "Mary" and her family harshly, and this tells us a lot about her perspective. But the sole sentence she could devote to the girl raises a ton of questions that I wish I could answer. What constituted arrogance and aggression in a four-year-old girl? What were the desires "Mary" was trying to fulfill by "mak[ing] her way by force"? Who did she play with on the street, what were their games, and what kind of social relations did they act out in playing them?

I think we all think we know children like "Mary," but we have to consider what kind of expectations adults had for little girls in the 1930s. To another observer in another time—perhaps even today—"Mary" might simply be a high-spirited youngster, even a tomboy.

Some of the Greatest Geniuses Went to Slumber Parties

In the 1910s-'30s they had what were known as child study groups. Basically, a group of mothers (and sometimes fathers) would gather to hear about the latest research into child development and discuss some assigned reading. I've found some minutes from a New York City group dating from 1931. The discussion topic: homosexuality. One member of the group worried, "Young people today say, 'We don't think anything [negative] about these people. They are just as good as anybody else and some of the greatest geniuses have been homosexuals.' " The task was disabusing the kids of that notion. "The whole idea can be gotten across to the growing child that if there is someone in difficulty it is not our business to stone them but to understand what the difficulties are and to see whether we can help them," explained the leader. "In that way you take away any feeling of exaltation in regard to these people[.]" Hey, no more stoning! Yay!

And "exaltation," yes indeedy. Throughout the minutes of these meetings, the members repeatedly refer to the "glamor" [sic] of homosexuality (sometimes called inversion). In Gay New York, George Chauncey discusses "mainstream" fascination with "the fairy" in the first half of the twentieth century. It's still an amazing read, nearly fifteen years after it was first published. But naturally, he doesn't write about lesbians, because lesbians are "invisible," damn it! I'm sure he tried really hard to find them. Nonetheless, it was very surprising to me that life for gay men in New York was ever anything but life in the closet. It wasn't true. There were African American drag balls discussed in "straight" newspapers and so forth. "Fairies" were visible all over the urban landscape. So what I've found is that in the 1930s the kids also knew about the gays and were cool with it. Adults couldn't shield their eyes from it. (Was it Walter Pater or John Addington Symonds who came up with the line about genius? No matter.)

OK, long quotation time! The members of the child study meetings I am talking about discussed many things about homosexuality, but they were especially concerned about warning signs. And lo and behold, they talked more about girls than boys. Take that, gay male historians! Invisible, my ass. Here's how the leader of the group explained "crushes."

A mother in one of our study groups was very much concerned because her daughter wanted to go to a friend's house to stay all night where the two girls would have to sleep together. The daughter was fifteen and a half and had plenty of boy friends and was perfectly normal but the mother was afraid to let her sleep with her friend. Girls have always slept together but they didn't necessarily become homosexuals.

But suppose we have a girl who by and large does not find much companionship and she likes to sit by herself and do things by herself. She doesn't see boys and they don't see her, but she begins to find pleasure in girls and gets so she worships some girl or woman. I know of one girl who stopped biting her nails because she dedicated one hand to one loved girl friend and the other hand to another. Don't you see what a different picture this is than the two normal girls who just wanted to spend the night in each other's homes? With one picture we should be concerned and not with the other.

Wow, the fingernails! That's the kind of detail historians kill for. It raises so many questions about the nature of affection between teenage girls at that time in history and provides so many clues about things like parent-child relationships and girls' culture. Like, how did this woman's daughter come to tell her mom about her new fingernail habits? I'm guessing that she was a compulsive nail-biter and one day suddenly stopped, and her mom noticed and asked her why. I wonder if the cessation of nail biting was just the girl's idea, or whether all her friends were doing it too—doesn't it sound like one of those school fads? It also might speak to the nature of how people understood "compulsions" in relation to homosexuality. The women in this group were definitely up to date with the latest in psychoanalytic theories, one of which was that nail biting was an oral fixation that betokened an arrest of sexual development. So in the popular understanding, maybe nail biting could lead to homosexuality. Modern parenting: it's always been one big hairball of anxiety.

I don't want to speculate about the answers to all of these questions—that's not my job. I've read enough to know that in some cases girls were just sleeping in the same bed and in others they were "sleeping" in the same bed, if you get my drift. But do girls now sleep in the same bed when they sleep over? If not, that also represents historical change. It could be that parents got the homosexual-panic bug at some point and came to forbid it. It also occurs to me that as people moved to the suburbs, houses just got bigger, and there might have been room for more beds. That's the kind of thing that will take more research.

People always want to know for sure what girls were doing in those beds. A generalization, I think, is impossible, and also pretty pointless. Although I've been tempted to do otherwise, I prefer to let it go unsaid.

The Poetry of Pathology

I come across a lot of personality inventories, IQ tests, and the like in my work, but today I found something called the Chicago Sustained Application Profile in a book of a social worker's case histories from 1933.

A study of the sustained-application profile in history showed constant interruption of her own thoughts, as if she did not quite understand what she was doing. It was to be noted especially that she was working most of the time, but it was not purposeful study. She spent a few minutes on the notes, another few minutes reading the book, and then a few minutes writing, then back to the notes.

This case might as well be labeled "Case No. 123: CheeseQuest," because as readers of this blog no doubt know, this pretty much describes my intellectual method. What struck me about the case study in this book were the diagrams of this girl's attention patterns. They're sort of like vertical frequency-wave graphs: they show two columns, "Distraction" and "Application," with a line that weaves back and forth between the two. When the subject crosses the line into Distraction, the graph notes her action. The names of these actions struck me as unintentional poetry (kind of like the "poetry" of Donald Rumsfeld back in the day). So I give you four poems of the Chicago Sustained Application Profile.

"History Class, Dec. 2"
Turns around
Erases
Looks at notes
Looks at notes
Erases
Looks at notes
Turns sheets of notes
Turns leaves of book
Picks up pocketbook
Puts head on her hands

"History Class, Dec. 8"
Looks on paper
Scratches head
Turns back her notes
Looks at clock
Looks up
Scratches head
Looks ahead
Fills the pen
Looks at guide sheet
Handles several books
Picks up another book

"Study Period, Dec. 1"
Smooths hair
Restless
Restless
Restless

"Study Period, Dec. 2"
Dreams
Rests
Idle

Better to Marry Than to Burn

I'm trying to piece together a theory about psychiatry in the mid-1930s. The idea is that experts (and many lay people) thought there was a reserve of sexual energy in each one of us and we have to find some way to let it out. These "outlets" could render you well adjusted (i.e., if you were engaged in married heterosexual coitus) or maladjusted (i.e., anything else). But everyone needed an outlet of some sort, and if an individual found this outlet in, for example, solitary masturbation or homosexuality, well, it wasn't very healthy, but it was often understandable. It all depended on how your desires were channeled during early childhood. Just your basic Freudian vitalism, I guess.

The one thing that really threatened these experts, I think, was celibacy. It was one of the most important causes (and effects!) of neurosis. Celibacy wasn't so much a choice as the result of negative psychosexual growth. The people whose work I'm studying regarded it as "immaturity."

With this realization, I naturally went on one of my research digressions. There is a relatively new history of celibacy out there. But the idea of celibacy brought to mind the Catholic clergy, so I decided to go to the source: I Corinthians 7. (I have the King James Version, which the Catholic clergy wouldn't use, but whatever. The link above will take you to a site where you can get more translations of the Bible than you can imagine.) This chapter is the kind of Paul everyone demonizes: virginity, virginity, virginity; don't leave your husband, etc. But it also deals with the idea behind priestly celibacy that I learned in CCD (what the Protestants call Sunday school): "He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife" (32-33).

Paul also goes on about celibacy among the laity: "...I would that all men were even as I myself [celibate]. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn."

That passage has stuck with me for the last week or so. The 1930s psychiatrists always struck me as trying so hard to be forward-thinking, but in some ways it looks like they were drawing on much older sources and traditions. I have no idea what biblical criticism was like in the 1930s, but I wonder.

Fortune Smiles

Direct from Missouri, the first impression of the 1953 edition of the Girl Scout Handbook arrived on my doorstep this morning. Pressed between its leaves were not one, not two, but three four-leaf clovers. I'm beside myself.

First Impressions

One of my professors told me that one of his students bought all of his sources on Abe Books for like $1. I now believe it. I just ordered the first impression of the Girl Scout Handbook, 1953 edition, for $1 plus $4.99 shipping.

Yes, ILL is free, but ILL sucks.

History of the Book/Cookie Pushers Redux

I was hoping to avoid another archive trip to finish this article, but it looks like I'm going to have to go. Part of this project is to compare two editions of a book. Or rather, two printings of a book—specifically, the Girl Scout Handbook; more specifically, the fourth and sixth impressions. (I'd also like to see the fifth, of course, but I'm pretty sure the most significant changes happened between the fourth and the sixth.) So it would seem that a trip to the Girl Scouts archive is in order. I feel tired just thinking about it.

Interlibrary loan: my savior, and the bane of my existence. I requested "the 1953 edition" of the Girl Scout Handbook. Little did I know that it had gone through so many impressions. The one ILL got me was from late 1955. But it's the right "edition," so I guess I can't be mad.

Ever wonder about those Girl Scouts? Where did they get their marching orders from? Let's peruse the 1953 handbook (eighth impression, November 1955) and see if we can find out.

According to a report submitted to Congress, the most popular Girl Scout badge in 1953 was Cook. (What, not Truck Gardener?!) To earn this badge, a Girl Scout had to "Prepare a breakfast, lunch, or supper for your family or patrol." Now, lots of scholars have jumped all over the Girl Scouts for trying to mold girls into compliant homemakers. But my subversive reading of this badge requirement is that the handbook offers "patrol" as a legitimate alternative to "family": a chosen community of girl peers gets equal billing with a bio family. Let's see, what else. "Cook eggs in three different ways." Hmmm, an activity that undercuts ovobinarisms. Moving on: "Make cocoa with three kinds of milk and decide which kind you prefer." While the signifying Other (the dark "cocoa") here is singular, and outnumbered and thus dominated by the plural, decidedly Eurocentric subject (the light "milk"), the passage also suggests a post-racial hybridity in which the Other can be both "pure" ("unmixed" cocoa powder) and "mongrel" (milkified cocoa for drinking); moreover, one's hybridity may be chosen.

Just for fun, let's open the book at random and see what badge we get. OK, how about Wood? You'll be interested to know the badge pictures a totem pole. Oh, this is great! One of the three absolute requirements to earn this badge: "Make some article of wood for the comfort of your animal friends." I don't know why, but "litter box" comes to mind. Mine would for sure have a totem pole on it.

Here's one called Minstrel—ulp! It's 1955, I don't know what we're in for. Ah, phew, nothing to do with minstrel shows (thank you, Girl Scouts, thank you). "Write a story about the meistersingers in Germany, troubadours in France and Spain, or minstrels of England. Learn several of their songs." Do I have to sing them too?

Finally, Clerk. Oh dear. Absolute requirements: "Dramatize the courteous way to approach salespeople, to wait on people, and to receive visitors in an office"; "Learn how to use and care for the following: typewriter, hand-stapling machine, fountain pen, and automatic pencil. Be able to read a postal scale"; "In a skit show how to apply for a job." According to eBay, this is a rare badge. I guess I'm happy for that. I wonder if the seller can read a postal scale to know how much to charge for shipping!

I'd write more, but I have to go learn to care for my automatic pencil.

Too Many Broths Spoil the Cook

One of the promises I make as CheeseQuest is never to bore you with whining and complaining about my work. I know I've broken this rule on occasion, but the Quest is all about bringing you enough fun facts to make you wish you were writing my dissertation. I hope you'll also cheer me on when it comes to this crazy article I'm writing. Seriously, I thought it would take me two weeks to bang out a first draft. But production is a bit slow. I feel like Nestor Almendros waiting for "the golden hour" to shoot Days of Heaven, by which I mean I can only write the equivalent of Almendros shooting twenty-five minutes of film for an entire day. The Paramount Studios breathing down my back, freaking out about the budget overruns, my narcissistic perfectionism, and the long delays, is my dissertation.

Let me get back on track before I run too far with this analogy and turn into Terrence Malick, the brilliant but underproductive director of Days of Heaven. (CheeseQuest! Step away from the analogy!) What I meant to write about was the state of knowing too much, which one of the Cheeseville U. faculty members always says can torpedo a work. As I'm finding out now, knowing too much causes you to write in too much detail. Each detail leads to more qualification, which, if you're not careful, can lead you to make razor-thin changes in your interpretation. If you're writing from a particular theoretical standpoint, it can cause you to do backflips in order to get your evidence to fit your thesis, which you should never do. And because you've got tons of evidence, your thesis becomes ever more complicated; you may lose track of it completely. I have the additional problem of finding each detail endlessly fascinating. Ultimately, as I am finding, knowing too much makes your work very late, and you're often unhappy with the result.

I spent all of yesterday trying to figure out my protagonist's views on race. This was actually one of my priorities as I was gathering my evidence, because the minor political dustup I am writing about happened in 1954, pretty much to the day of the Brown decision, and my protagonist was an adopted southerner. He personally benefited from segregation and opposed Brown as inimical to southern tradition. The problem that has stumped me is that he had an opportunity to spread a rumor smearing an African American man as a communist, and to the best of my knowledge, he didn't.

Why? I tried to answer this question by looking at his autobiography, but I give that masterpiece almost no credence because the letters he wrote at the time directly contradict it. I looked at his libertarian magnum opus, and while it gave me a good idea of his philosophy in 1960, it was quite unlike what he was writing in 1954. What caused him to shift his views so radically? I tried to figure out his political lineage: which conservatives influenced him? This also stumped me, most likely because he cut his teeth on anti-FDR politics during the Depression, and I've read absolutely nothing in graduate school on contemporary opposition to the New Deal—only the anti-ND conservative movement that culminates (maybe) in Reagan's presidency. I looked at the liberals he seemed to be attacking, but this only led to more confusion because they didn't say what I thought they'd say.

You can see where I'm going with this. Despite all these lacunae, I know too much. I wouldn't even have been asking these questions had I not known this rumor was spreading. It does figure in how the scandal played out, but it's kind of a sideshow. It has to do with race, however, and I'm pretty stubborn about figuring out racial politics. It's political that this guy apparently chose not to spread this rumor. But is it important? I can no longer tell.