Check out my contribution to the Notches Back to School Special: Introducing Students to the History of Sexuality. What strategies for introducing your students to the historical study of sexuality have you used?
Tag: UChicago
Moving On
I’m taking a break from packing boxes to show off two new t-shirts: one, from my first trip to the (16th Annual) Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, the other, my official University of Chicago History Department Alumni t-shirt (not available for sale, they’ll have you know).
About that alumni tee? Yes, I passed my dissertation defense on May 19! So with that, Dr. Monica, Ph.D., will see you in Philadelphia on July 1. Now, back to those boxes…
“Research in a Digital Age” Links
Are you interested in making your research available to a wider audience using digital resources? Have you considered the possible benefits of using social media, blogs, or video to expand your reach? The use of online resources for academic and professional research purposes is a growing yet largely underdeveloped and oftentimes ambiguous field. This workshop will discuss different avenues for disseminating your research beyond the traditional route of journal or manuscript publication, why development of these skills is becoming more important in a competitive job market, and pitfalls to avoid…
[update: view my presentation on YouTube]
When the SSD asked me to participate in Friday’s Leadership Lab conversation, Research in a Digital Age, it provided an opportunity to reflect on the choices I made (and continue to make) about building a web presence and sharing my work online. The following links are a useful reading list for graduate students weighing similar decisions:
- Miriam Posner, Brian Croxall, and Stewart Varner for ProfHacker: “Creating Your Web Presence: A Primer for Academics“
- Ryan Cordell for ProfHacker: “How to Start Tweeting and Why You Might Want To“ and “Creating and Maintaining a Professional Presence Online: A Roundup and a Reflection“
- Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed: “Embargoes for Dissertations?” (and the AHA debate)
Have anything to add? Leave a reply!
A “Desire for History” at UChicago
How does queer studies engage with the archive? Since 2007, students and faculty affiliated with the University of Chicago Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality have worked to build archival collections documenting the experiences of women and LGBTQ individuals and communities at UChicago. This talk gives a brief history of the project’s origins in feminist and women’s history, and addresses what it means to once-marginalized communities to have a place in the University archives.
Last month, I had the chance to speak about our work creating a LGBTQ archive on campus for the University of Chicago’s annual Humanities Day celebrations. Watch, learn, and contribute to our project:
A “Desire for History” at UChicago
How does queer studies engage with the archive? Since 2007, students and faculty affiliated with the University of Chicago Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality have worked to build archival collections documenting the experiences of women and LGBTQ individuals and communities at UChicago. This talk gives a brief history of the project’s origins in feminist and women’s history, and addresses what it means to once-marginalized communities to have a place in the University archives.
Last month, I had the chance to speak about our work creating a LGBTQ archive on campus for the University of Chicago’s annual Humanities Day celebrations. Watch, learn, and contribute to our project.
Invisible Designs
This week, join graduate students and faculty at the University of Chicago conference “Invisible Designs: New Perspectives on Race and Consumer Capitalism,” organized by Ph.D. students Chris Dingwall and Korey Garibaldi. From the conference website:
This conference takes design as an object and a theme to gain new perspective on the study of race in American consumer society. How has racialized imagery sustained the work of capitalism and American dreams of the “good life”? Considering design in relation to problems of self-fashioning, material culture, immigration, urban and suburban development, and decorative commodities, we will engage with the latest scholarly conversations about race and capitalism and explore paths for future inquiry. Ultimately the conference aims to uncover the otherwise “invisible” cultural logics and historical processes that have woven racial difference into the fabric of American life.
I’ll be presenting some preliminary research on first communion portrait photography and the material culture of Nuyorican migration as part of the panel “Life Design” on Thursday morning, October 24. The conference and related exhibition, “Race and the Design of American Life,” will take place at Special Collections Research Center at Regenstein Library.
View the full schedule and register online. [link]
Summer Oral History Project News
This month the Closeted/Out on the Quadrangles Project, which I supervise, recorded its 40th oral history interview since September 2012.
To showcase the ongoing work of the project, we’re starting to collect our thoughts on tumblr. Over time, we’ll use it as a space to share findings and highlight the courses, programs, undergraduate student work, and public history stories associated with the larger world of history of sexuality research.
Follow us here.
Bodies of Evidence | Nan Boyd on Oral History
As part of my work for the Closeted/Out project, I have been organizing a series of workshops that bring visiting scholars to campus to join us in ongoing conversations about the role of gender and sexuality studies in public history theory and practice. Previous talks have featured Jennifer Brier, Associate Professor of History and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago (and a recent NEA grant recipient for her Mobile Museum!), and Tim Stewart-Winter, Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers-Newark, where he is also a steering committee member of the Queer Newark project. This Thursday, May 30 at noon, we’re thrilled to welcome Nan Alamilla Boyd, Professor of Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University, to discuss her recent edited volume, Bodies of Evidence: the Practice of Queer Oral History (Oxford UP, 2012).
For more information on Professor Boyd’s visit (and to RSVP), visit the CSGS Event Calendar.
Monica L. Mercado, Ph.D. 