So Close to Done

I presented my paper on the Lincoln College Typikon this evening, and it was fabulous, if I do say so myself, even taking into account the fact that three slides into my presentation I realized that lo, the version of the Powerpoint that I had just copied off my computer onto my flash drive this morning was not the right version. Luckily, I knew that I had the correct one in my email inbox, so I downloaded it in two seconds and we were back on track, and Dr. Bolman told us how that happened to her once when she was presenting at Oxford, so I guess having it happen in a class of your peers is not so terrible. My friend Jeannine told me after that she was surprised how composed I was about the whole thing, which may have been my outward appearance, but inside I was screaming "fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!" I also almost made a joke about hoping I didn't have any porn in my inbox when I opened my Gmail account--because whatever you're doing on the computer appears onscreen--but luckily my mental filter was set to 'Bolman' and thus I refrained.

Anyway, the presentation itself went swimmingly after that minor blip, Dr. Bolman had no problems with it, and everyone seemed to enjoy it, which is good. One of the religious studies girls who's in our class told me that she was impressed by my pronunciation of Greek, ironically, despite consulting with Sean, Agnes, and this girl Anna who actually is Greek, as of this morning I was still incorrectly pronouncing ktetor as 'kehtator' instead of really combining the 'kt' sound. Agnes finally corrected me at the last minute, and I was certain that I wouldn't pronounce it correctly when I was actually reading, but apparently it was OK.

In conclusion, a shout-out to the nuns of Theotokos Bebaias Elpidos in all their black-clad glory: you may have gotten the shaft because you were not aristocrats, and your abbess may have completely forgotten to make arrrangements for your funerary commemorations despite you guys being her 'spiritual daughters,' and even when your portrait did get painted you may have been left completely anonymous, but....you still rock.

On the Awesomeness of my Future Mother-In-Law

Awesome is kind of the only word for Linda, I have to say. She booked us a room at the Steamboat Inn in Mystic for the couple of days after our wedding. We were planning to ask if we could go to their camper at the lake for a couple of days, but a posh B&B in Mystic is, um, 1000% times cooler. :-)

Itinerary

I bought the Lonely Planet guide to Rome yesterday, and spent about an hour going through to get a preliminary list of places I want to see in my month in the Eternal City. This is what I have, so far:

Ancient Rome:
Palatine: 11, includes Colosseum
Circo Massimo
Capitoline Museum, 6.50
Chiesa di Santa Maria in Aracoeli
Vittoriano Monument: nice views of city, esp. at night, 7 euro to go up to the roof

Centro Storico
Pantheon
Elefantino statue, behind Pantheon
Chiesa di Santa Maria sopra Minerva
El Gesu (Loyola's rooms, 4-6, Mon-Sat)
Piazza Navona
Chiesa di Santa Maria della Pace
Chiesa Nuova
Chiesa di Sant'Ivo della Sapienza (Sun 10-12 only!)
Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi
Chiesa di Sant'Agostino
Palazzo Farnese (4-5 MWF, need to reserve a place and have ID)
Palazzo Spada/Galleria Spada
Museo Barracco di Scultura Antica, 3
Chiesa di San Andrea della Valle
Chiesa di San Nicola in Carceri (excavations underneath)
Ara Pacis, 6.50
Mausoleo di Augusto
Chiesa di San Ignazio di Loyola
Palazzo e Galleria Doria Pamphilii, 8

Esquilino,Quirinale, Piazza di Spagna
Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore
Basilica di San Pietro in Vincoli
Domus Aurea, 4.50
Chiesa di Sant' Andrea al Quirinale
Chiesa di San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
Galleria Colonna, 7
Galleria Nazionale dell'Arte Antica, 5
Museo Nazionale Romano, 7
Chiesa di Santa Maria della Vittoria

Southern Rome
Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano (Scala Sancta)
Baths of Caracalla, 6
Via Appia/Catacombs,5
Basilica di Santa Sabina
Cimitero Acattolico per gli Stranieri
Basilico di San Paolo Fuori le Mure
EUR

Trastevere
Villa Farnesina, 5
Orto Botanico, 3
Tempietto di Bramante

Villa Borghese and Northern Rome
Villa Borghese, 8.50
Museo Nazionale Etrusca di Villa Giulia
Chiesa di Santa Maria del Popolo
Foro Italico
Basilio di Santa'Agnese Fuori Le Muri
Chiesa di Santa Costanza

Wow. I didn't even put the Vatican museums on here, because, well, duh, Rome = Vatican. So despite the staggering number of places I want to see, the great thing about the dozens and dozens of churches is that they are free. In fact, I can see everything on this list for under 100 euro. Teehee. If I do wind up having any room in my schedule at all, particularly on the weekend when I will not be in Florence (sans Carla, alas!) or in Pompeii, I'd like to go out to Tivoli to see Hadrian's villa, or to Cerveteri to see the Etruscan tombs.

I think that somehow, after a month of trying to cram two thousand years of art and history into my brain in this one city, Spain will indeed feel like vacation. You might even call it a honeymoon...

One Month and Counting...

Our wedding is a month from today. WTF? I told Sean, until I've finished my papers for this semester, I can't even really focus my attention on it. But I'm close to done. My modern art paper is all set; I present my Durer paper in two hours, and hopefully my professor will not suggest major revisions. This weekend is "Byzantine illuminated manuscript fun time" and then I present that on Tuesday.

I wrote my first abstract to submit to that Bryn Mawr conference! It amuses/horrifies me that my first professionally presented paper could be on Playboy. I will also admit to a bit of the 'sin of pride': when we were hanging out before class earlier this week, another girl mentioned that she was thinking of just coming up with an idea to submit to the conference, and then writing the paper over the summer. I didn't say anything, but in my head I was thinking 'our professor suggested I send my paper in, so THERE!'

Naturally, getting this kind of validation from a professor also makes me more confident that this is somewhere I belong, that I can really do this. My first semester I was nervous that somehow, what I did wouldn't be enough, and they would regret giving me that fellowship. Then I got an A in all three classes, and I felt better, having proved that I was up to snuff academically. Even if it stands precious little chance of being accepted, as the conference is open not only to art history, but to history and classics as well (ladies and gentlemen, an analysis of appropriation in Sappho's poetry, followed by Ms. DiMarzo's naked ladies), just submitting a paper makes me feel, again, like I'm proving to myself that I can be an art historian. And, come fall, I will undertake to prove it a third time by passing the comps, but that's another can of worms entirely!

Eep!

Whenever there's a call for papers, all of us get an email on the listserv. Today there was one for Bryn Mawr's Graduate Symposium on the subject of "Thievery: The Anxiety of Influence and Appropriation," and my modern art professor emailed me to suggest that I submit an abstract for my Playboy paper. Which is AWESOME, even though I highly, highly doubt they will select it, that he thought it was good enough. Cheshire cat grin: check.

The Magnificent Seven

Watching this movie always makes me think of the old "when men were men" cliche, because in this movie, they really were. Men in tight pants with spurs on, riding horses and shooting things: cheesy, yet hot. My favorites are Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson...I love Robert Vaughan's character, too, even though he's a dandy.

Hm, according to IMDB this has one of the most popular movie scores of all time. I don't know if I totally agree with that, it's not a score I could think of without having the movie on. Sean and I discussed this the other day, we agreed that Indiana Jones and Stars Wars are definitely among the most memorable movie scores, but then we couldn't think of any others to add to the list.

War

Yesterday my friend Rachel gave a presentation, comparing Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece of 1512:



to Otto Dix's War Triptych of 1932:

Dix's painting seemed to me like an illustration of All Quiet on the Western Front, which was probably the first book I read that brought home to me the 'horrors of war.' Something about that conflict, about the horrific effects of the gas, the fear of being in the trenches and just waiting to be bombed, scared me in a way that stories about other conflicts, before or since, really haven't. Maybe because it was the first 'modern' war, maybe because we were arrogant enough to call it the Great War as though something that massive and terrible couldn't be expected within the same century, much less the same generation. Maybe also because the reasons for it were so much less clear--and let's be honest, Archduke Ferdinand aside, are still less clear--than the reasons for WWII.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Also

Third post of the day...just to record that this is, in fact, my father's 9th anniversary. Where did nine years go?

Hm

"The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." --Ecclesiastes 1:9

Thank you, Jezebel: I did not know that "there's nothing new under the sun" comes from the quotation above! (And thank you, Dr. B, for correcting me when I emailed to ask if it was ok to use a 'quote' from a scholar to begin my paper; I will now never use 'quote' as a noun again, because it is evil, evil slang). The Bible is like Shakespeare, the more you read of it, the more you realize all the references and turns of speech that we owe to those writers, phrases that have simply worked themselves into our daily language such that we assume they have always been there. Of course, the Bible had a bit of a running start on the Bard, what, thirteen centuries? I forget when they settled upon the canon. NWC religion classes, you fail me!

In other religious news, I was reading some of Martin Luther's work today because he wrote a couple of tracts about war against the Turks; or rather, he had to write the tracts in 1529 because people had misunderstood something he had written 11 years before in his explanation of the 95 theses. Specifically, he said that it was not right to mount a crusade against the Turks because the Turks were a scourge from God, so resisting them was like resisting God (which, if you're following along, is baaaad). Writing something like that was OK in 1518, when the Turks hadn't really caused any trouble for two decades, but by 1529 the Turks had defeated the Hungarians and laid siege to Vienna, and people apparently were blaming ML for both the Turks' advance and for some Christians refusing to resist them. Thus, he wrote an essay where he explained that what he was getting at was that it was wrong for the church to mount a crusade, because the church should not be in the business of war; nor should crusades be something that people join for glory or bounty (or any of the other things people had historically joined crusades to obtain) etc, etc.

What amused me in all of this was the realization that the modern era has in no way cornered the market on pure snark. Luther is, of course, an intelligent and highly readable writer, but I had no idea he was so sarcastic! Near the end of the essay he complains that instead of the German emperor mounting a righteous crusade in defense of his people, he's holding a Diet about the Reformation:

“Meanwhile, our princes consult about how they can harass Luther and the gospel: It is the gospel which is the Turk! Force must be used against it! The gospel must be put to rout! That is what they are doing right now at Spires, where the most important matters are the eating of meat and fish and foolishness like that.”

Luther: my new favorite snark buddy.

Random

The picture above is a woodcut illustration of the siege of Rhodes from a Turkische Chronica published in Germany in 1516, which might wind up being an image I use in my paper. What amuses me, though, is that after decades of images of "aaaahh scary Turk! We hate him!" you get this, which really looks to me like it should be part of a Monty Python skit. Imagine John Cleese's voice, "Hellooo! I'm a Turk and we're here to take your island! Can we come in?" and then "No....no, I'd really rather you didn't." Cleese-voice: "Very well! We'll wait!"

Playboy Presentation

I gave my presentation today based on the image above, and it was lovely! Everyone really seemed to like it, even if there were two kids (MFA kids, naturally) who were actually napping during the Q&A afterward; like, chin-on-chest, eyes closed, napping. I briefly thought about making some kind of dick comment but I didn't. Still, really, if you can't keep your eyes open when there are naked ladies on the screen, there is no hope for you in this life. Anyway, Dr. Silk told me that I was one of the few students that he really didn't have any corrections or suggestions for, so that means I can just mentally file this paper under "done," which is awesome. I was kind of expecting to be challenged more on my conclusion, but people were actually more interested in debating things like, is that stained window supposed to be a vagina or a sperm? Seriously. Dr. Silk's reasoned opinion was that it was intended to be ambiguous...

And below, just for shits and giggles, I include the wonderfully photoshopped image that Sara did for me, after seeing my pathetic attempt at MS Paint-ing this off the original cover. I even got a compliment on this slide from one of the art girls. The point, incidentally, was that if you remove the image itself from the textual context that basically tells you "think of this as porn," it's really much more open to interpretation. Which was not my conclusion to the paper at all; rather, that was based on finding a potentially positive reading of the image within its context that resists reflexive labelling. I used the phrase "autonomous sexual subject" in a paper, which I think means I am officially one of those people now. Yes.


Now I must only conquer two other papers: one is on representations of the Turks in Germany between the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the first siege of Vienna in 1529, and the other is on the construction of gender identity in a late Byzantine convent. Boo to the first, but hell yeah to the second! Manuscript illuminations, what!

Aimless, Awesome Friday

Sara was miraculously in Philadelphia for the day yesterday. She came to Temple and we hung out in our super-awesome basement lounge. I had her listen to my Playboy presentation that I'm giving on Tuesday, and she suggested what parts needed to be strengthened, which was quite helpful. It was awesome just to get to see Sara, which is a rarity due to the insaneness of her schedule and the company she works for. Just to get four hours off (they were having a half-day anyway) she had to tell her supervisor that she needed to be in Philadelphia to provide emotional support to a friend whose parents had just died. True, my parents are dead, but they did not just die, and more importantly, you shouldn't have to tell your boss your business just to be able to use the personal time that you're entitled to!

After Sara left to go meet up with Adette, we had a makeup Byzantine/gender studies class, one of several we'll be fitting in this month because Dr. Bolman was in Egypt for most of March. Although having class at 4 on a Friday seemed like an onerous proposition, it turned out to be one of the most entertaining and interesting discussions we've had. Jasmine brought up the question of whether using the tools of gender studies can actually tell us anything about an art object itself, or whether they just help us read through the object to the culture that created it. How do we give the object agency, and look at it not just as a 'reflection' of cultural gender constructions, but as something that actively created and shaped those very constructions? She's working on Byzantine chalices, so I can understand why it's tough to get at it in that way. My project deals with the typikon of a convent in Constantinople that depicts the foundress in both lay and monastic garb; it's an object she (or her daughter) commissioned, so it's easier to see their hand in it and understand it as a construction of gender according to, in this case, the privileges of upper-class women, who could both have their monastic cake and eat it too.

After that, we wound up arguing about an even more fundamental issue: the role of feminism in modern scholarship. Gender studies owes its very existence to feminist scholarship, beginning in the 1970s. At the beginning of the course we read an introduction to a book on gender studies and Byzantium by Liz James, who identified three stages of feminist historical research: namely, "women in, women and the means of production; and beyond women--gender. " In other words, in the beginning, these feminist scholars realized that women have consistently been ignored in mainstream history, and they set out to give them voice. In Renaissance art history, that meant working on artists like Sofanisba Anguissola and Artemisia Gentileschi, as well as trying to recuperate other, lesser-known women. The second stage, which owes a lot to Marxism, was about identifying the ways in which women were marginalized and their achievements undermined. Finally, in the third stage, scholars recognized that if femininity is a cultural construction, so too is masculinity, and they began to look at gender construction overall.

Thus, gender studies has replaced feminist scholarship in many ways, and many of the names who were pioneering in feminist research a few decades ago moved into the gender studies category. But not all, and that's where it gets tricky; there are some older feminist scholars who are sticking with pure feminist studies, because as they see it, men have always been the default of history, so analyzing constructed masculinities on the same field as femininity is basically conceding the advantage back to men. Which I find ridiculous, frankly; the bulk of gender studies work is being done on women, not men, for the very reason that a lot of people find it difficult to justify working on the construction of masculine identities. Gender studies is not going to turn into man studies. Moreover, I just don't understand how you can justify only looking at at one half (or one-third, if you're thinking of adding eunuchs in) of the gender equation, unless you have a political agenda, which I think feminist scholars often do.

After that discussion was done, Dr. Bolman wound up letting us go early rather than lecture for the last half-hour on middle Byzantine architecture, as she had planned--something for which we were all clearly grateful. At that point a bunch of us headed out for some food and, more importantly, alcohol, at a pub downtown, which was a good time--I can't even remember the last time I laughed that hard. In the span of three hours, I wound up spending thirty dollars on drinks, and if I had had any more money on me I would have challenged Jeannine to another round. As it was, it was probably a perfect time to stop, because despite walking to the train station, waiting forty-five minutes for our respective trains, riding the train home for half an hour, and even getting off at the stop before mine so I could walk it off a little more, I still had to stay up another hour before I deemed it hangover-safe to go to sleep. But even if I'd had a hangover this morning, which happily I did not, it would have been totally worth it.

In The Money...Sorta

Ron transferred the money to pay for the wedding into my bank account this morning. I opened Bank of America and my checking says: Hello! I am a lot of money, and you can briefly pretend that I am yours to spend on whatever you choose! To be fair, between the time when I sold the house and when the trust account was opened, I had several hundred thousand dollars spread out among a few accounts, so really this is not as shocking as that was every time I looked at my bank account. And this money will be almost entirely gone by the end of the month....whoot?

Sigh

What a freaking nice day, and I'm sitting here trying to write about Chicana art and porn which is a giant FAIL.

Botticelli Boys

Madonna of the Magnificat and Madonna of the Pomegranate, respectively. I love their hair!

Good News Friday

Sean got into the University of Virginia today!!

The Book That Will Not Die

I still have more than a hundred pages to read in the next hour and a half about Hans Baldung Grien and his Durer/daddy complex, witches, sausages that might be castrated penises, and then horses. Where is the justice?

Oh, and the woman on the ground in the picture? She's lighting a torch. From her ass. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

I Just Realized...

...that I started writing on this blog seven years ago this month! I'm a little late for the anniversary (March 9). Over 960 posts and counting! Perhaps I'll break 1,000 by the summer.

What a Morning

Today I had yet another of my panic attack moments where I'm walking to the train but suddenly can't remember if I checked that I unplugged my hair straightener. With six minutes till the train comes, I run back up the block, up and down three flights of stairs and then back to the station, arriving just as the train pulls up. Awesome that I caught it; NOT awesome that I have been left coughing intermittently ever since. It's not serious coughing, but if I take a really deep breath I feel a tickle in my lungs. I will laugh if it turns out I have asthma, even a mild form. Both my parents did at one time or another, but I'd really rather not share any more medical history with them than I have to, given my already terrible odds of living past middle age!

Perhaps to balance out that crappiness, I got some good news today. Really good news, in fact. I'll be TA-ing next year, which gets you tuitition remission, health insurance, and a stipend, but one that's a lot smaller than what I have right now. Last week the graduate school told me that, contrary to what Dr. Hall indicated, they would not be 'topping off' that stipend to bring it to the level I have right now, basically meaning that although I am pretty poor right now, the next two years would be extremely difficult. However! I talked to Dr. Hall this morning and she told me to check again, because my fellowship is the highest one the university gives and should have that extra benefit. So this time I called the graduate school secretary directly, and discovered that she had somehow put me down as a University Fellow and not a Presidential Fellow (despite having a copy of the award letter in my file) That means that I'll still get the same support next year that I do now, which is a huge, astronomical, incomparable relief.

It's funny, when I think back to when I started working, I didn't think $33k was that much. By the time I left I was making $40k (Paul, ever-generous, told me he wanted me to be able to tell my next job that I had already been making that much so I wouldn't have to accept lower) and I still didn't think it was that much. Well, seen in the light of a $20k stipend...I was a millionaire!

Long Day

I had a dentist appointment this morning. I chose the place because it was close enough for me to walk and because, miraculously, I only had to make the appt two weeks in advance. It turned out to be in a sketchier part of Germantown, which wouldn't have bothered me except when I went in, I discovered that the inside of the office matched the outside. A dirty dentist's office is not a good indication. So I was already uneasy, and then I see the dentist come out, coughing repeatedly into his hand, which did it for me. I told the receptionist I'd had a text message telling me to come home immediately and ran like hell.

After that debacle, I headed out to the King of Prussia mall to have my wedding dress altered at Nordstrom. If I had thought about this in advance I would have perhaps worn something slightly fancier than sneakers and my 'Golden Lightning Bolts' tee shirt, because I looked about a hundred times more poor than the other glittery creatures swarming the dressing rooms. One girl was buying a $1000 prom dress. A thousand dollars, for prom? I'm not even willing to spend that much on a wedding dress! Another woman was buying a gown for a benefit she was going to tonight, and told me she was paying to have the seamstress do her dress while she waited. I have to admit that I felt a little bit like a minnow that had slipped in among the goldfish, and I was not thrilled that I'd have to stand in the middle of this circus on the platform to have the seamstress pin the dress. Luckily for me, I got a dressing room with its own little platform inside (how fancy you are, Nordstrom).

I couldn't help but notice that all of the sales assistants were well-dressed, highly made-up white women, while all of the seamstresses were Asian women. I wonder who gets paid more in that equation, the people who suck up to you in the dressing room (I watched one of these women tell a client "that looks AMAZING on you" to everything the lady put on; no bias there, of course) or the people who actually have a skill? Sadly, it's probably the professional ass-kissers. Since I'd already bought a dress from them, they didn't need to send an ass-kisser in with me; it was just the seamstress, who was very pleasant. Of course she told me the dress looks great on me, but it does, so I'm just going to take her at her word. No bias necessary! The alterations cost $53 between the hem and having the straps shortened just slightly, but based on how competent the seamstress appeared to be, I'm pretty confident they'll do a good job. I had originally expected to find a tailor via a recommendation from Phyllis, but to my chagrin, she actually didn't know anyone.

Obviously I really love this dress, and they don't sell it anymore, so I was somewhat anxious about something happening to it--when they hung it up on a rack by the register the train was on the ground, and I was like "not to be a bitch...but put a bag on that, please, right now." Then there was a piece of classic bridal snobbery: the saleswoman asked when my event was, and I told her I'd be getting married in May; she then looked at my simple but very elegant dress and said "Oh, is it a destination wedding?" As in, obviously you bought something that plain because it has to travel to Aruba in a suitcase, right? Then when I answered "No...I'm getting married outside," she smiled and said "Ahhhh, OK," as though that made it acceptable that I had not chosen a giant, pouf-tastic monstrosity. I should have told her I was getting married at the Ritz!

This experience reminded me that although one of the prime explanations for the high prices of a place like Nordstrom is that you're paying for exceptional service, I really don't require the kind of obsequious attention that they offer their customers (or at least those with acceptable wedding dress decisions). I'm content with salespeople who are polite and who will make a decent attempt to assist you if you so require, rather than those who fall all over themselves to ask you if you need anything, anything at all, and can they suggest the perfect pair of shoes to go with this, available in their shoe department? (Fyi, the shoes they suggested for my ivory dress were glittery silver.)

Shoes are another headache. Do you know how hard it is to find off-white or ivory ballet flats? Not white, not tan, but off-white? Hard! I've looked at DSW, Payless, Famous Footwear, Zappo's, and now, even Nordstrom. So if anyone spots a pair in an 8.5 and they're not prohibitively expensive (when am I ever going to wear off-white ballet flats again?), let me know. Please.