Moving to Chicago Mood: …

Moving to Chicago Mood: Still dazed, with a generally calm and slightly skeptical demeanor, interrupted by occasional bursts of happiness

I tried to get back on a more normal schedule last night; after talking to Kevin and then Jed for a while, I went to bed around 2. But my aunt called me at 8:40 this morning, which would normally be fine, but has left me a little groggy today. Should be back to normal by tomorrow, though, which is good. Mary Annes are not meant to sleep 'til 1.

Yesterday I finished Tehanu, went to evening workshop, came home and worked on my abstract for the Tananarive Due presentation at WisCon. Interested? This is the hundred-word version:

Does Power = Violence?
Constructions of (Black) Masculinity in Tananarive Due

In Tananarive Due's novels, male protagonists are invested with power, which they use (and abuse) indiscriminately in attempts to protect the people they love; they then are forced to confront their im/amorality, and by the end of the story, they resolve to restrain their use of power. This pattern raises difficult questions regarding Due's work; do the novels intend to imply that power inevitably leads (at least initially) to abuse and violence? And given that primary assertion, do they imply further that men (and perhaps black men in particular, given that all of these men of power are black) are particularly susceptible to such abuses of power?

If any of you have read her work, would love e-mail discussion on the subject; I'm kind of feeling my way through it right now. I made both the boys talk to me about it for a while last night, which helped. I really want to do a good job with this one, being fair to the author while doing a thorough examination of what's going on in the books. Tricky material...

This morning, sent out an e-mail to all the potential conference committee members; we're hoping to do that interdisciplinary conference again next spring, and we've had a really tough time getting people to show up for meetings! So I added some pleading into this e-mail, and hopefully that'll help. If we can just do one big meeting before the end of the semester, that should do it -- we can do the rest over e-mail this summer, I think. Fingers crossed; I really want this conference to happen again, 'cause I think it's a really good thing for the grad students here.

Various random things to do today; I might actually go to the gym. Sort of a shocking concept, but we'll see. I would rather go to a dance class, but there isn't another convenient one until Monday. Despite being groggy, I'm also feeling really energetic, in an odd sort of way. Like my limbs want to be moving -- and moving fast! (I suspect ten minutes on an exercise bike will cure me of that. :-)

Also need to pick up tax forms (if I don't have them already, which I should check). And groceries. And aside from that -- there's nothing on my schedule except work on the SH POD, which I suspect means that I'll have a harder time avoiding it than usual...

Hey, I didn't point you to this week at SH, did I? Charming feminist fairy tale by Ruth Nestvold, an article on christian apocalyptic fiction (of the sort that Susan G. is so oddly compelled by), and more, much more. Of course. :-)

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