In a nation that relies on precedence and constitutional law to determine our jurisprudence, we consult and depend upon 200 year-old texts for definitions of the way we should live in the present and build for the future. In a nation where our leaders and members of the press have turned to hackneyed catchphrases [...]
Now that school is over for the summer, I’m trying to stay engaged and find a way to practice the writing. I have found that commenting on the blog portion of the new Lewis Lapham project, Lapham’s Quarterly, is probably as good as I’m going to get until I decide to either post more [...]
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Among many of Professor Walker’s quotes and ideas that have left indelible imprints in my mind, there is one in particular I have contemplated often. One afternoon in class she said, in so many words, that a woman’s identity—the way a woman experiences herself and is recognized in the world—is [...]
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
In early January of 1789, Frances Burney was approaching the third year of her court appointment as Second Keeper of Robes for Queen Charlotte. Having enjoyed certain success both monetarily and publicly after the publication of her first two novels, the appointment was graciously offered by the Queen as a way for Burney to [...]
i woke up this morning thinking that i need to search the 19th century. what women were reading the 19th c. Germans? who else, from other parts of Europe, was thinking about history as an autonomous philosophical inquiry? what women–from any era–were trying to answer the question “what is history?” or “what [...]
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Almost one hundred and fifty years after the publication of Renee Descarte’s Discourse on Method (1637) and a hundred and twenty after Margaret Cavendish’s Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666), Immanuel Kant published his short essay — or manifesto — answering the title question, [...]
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Hello Gina,
Well, I read Hilda Smith’s forthcoming essay on Friday morning and set myself down to writing you my thoughts as soon as I was finished. I’m so glad I didn’t send them because after three days of ruminating, my thoughts have really changed.
I was at first concerned about her [...]
Thursday, September 14, 2006
if women participated in the enterprise of expansion…particularly using the instrument of scietific expedition…were their representations of the other any different from those of the men?
if part of the process of post enlightenment categorization/classification in europe was constructing binaries that included gender and race, how did those manifest in the representations of race/otherness of the [...]
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Margaret Cavendish
Writer on Natural Philosophy (1623 - 1673)
She was the Duchess of Newcastle. Margaret received no special scientific education as a child but nevertheless her interest in science was keen. While living in Paris in exile during the British civil war that began in 1642 she met and married William Cavendish. He was somewhat interested [...]