Despite the pervasive awkwardness of class, I'm learning quite a lot from George Chauncey & Readings in the History of Gender and Sexuality. I've been working on a paper that's forced me to try and figure out some of the very strange, very nuanced changes in the discourse around gender and sexual deviance in the past 100 years. It's hard because it's complicated, but that's good-hard. For this paper, I've been reading a story that's sad and bizarre. It's sad because it's about the trial of a 19-year-old woman (girl?) who killed her 17-year-old female lover after she tried to break off their relationship. The defendant was named Alice Mitchell, and because she was white and well-off, the story was well-covered in the newspapers of the day. What's bizarre (from our modern standpoint) is how her lawyers built her insanity defense. They argued that Mitchell was a "gender invert," which was considered a mental defect at the turn of the century. That is, she played outside with the boys when she was little, when she got older she never wanted to date men, and when she and her partner decided to run away, Alice was planning to act out the male role when they lived together. And the judge and jury were like, "She wanted to do what? Dress like a man? Act like a man? That girl is crazy!" And so Alice Mitchell went into a mental institution rather than into prison.

And that's just a little bit of gender and sexuality in 1892 for you.

The Yale library is both ridiculous and amazing, often in intertwined ways. There are two main libraries (for the humanities), located in the middle of campus and linked to one another by an underground tunnel. Though to be accurate, one of the libraries is actually underground, so it's not like you leave the tunnel once you enter it. Anyway, the libraries are linked. Now, like in any library system, you can have books sent from one library to another library. Like how today I had books sent from the underground library to the above-ground library so that I wouldn't have to look in the stacks. And now I feel terrible about it, because how much work was that, really? They should really build something into the system, so that assholes like me are prevented from placing requests for book-retrieval that will move the books any distance less than 25 yards.

At least I didn't place the request from a computer within the library.

On the other hand, it's undergraduates who work in the libraries, so I'm gonna say that one of them, and not a reference librarian with an MLS and a PhD, who will pull my books tomorrow.

I just watched Birth of a Nation (1915) for class (Blackspace & Cinema), and that movie is wild, y'all. It's one of the most important films in US film history, for sure, and also globally important as a groundbreaking narrative film. If you've ever heard about it, you'll know that it's super-controversial because it is set in the Reconstruction South and depicts the Ku Klux Klan as the hero of the post-Civil War era on account of the KKK saving the South from rule by unscrupulous carpetbaggers and ignorant blacks.

Of course, I've seen "problematic" films before, and I've seen racist films (including Australia (2008) -- sorry Hugh Jackman, it's gotta be said.). But I've seldom seen a film that was so racist that it didn't even upset me so much as astound me. This movie was so racist, I didn't even know what was going on half of the time. I kept asking my classmates (all two of them), "Wait, is that person in blackface supposed to be black?" And, "What is wrong with that mulatto woman? That person in blackface is supposed to be mulatto, right?" And, "Did that intertitle just refer to that crowd of people as 'crazed negroes'? If yes, where can I get a t-shirt with that on it?" I tell you, I don't even know what history books D.W. Griffith was reading. Because I am pretty sure that the Civil War was not fought in order to allow black men to rape white women. But listen, I only took a few American history classes, so maybe I don't remember.

I just came from my class in the History of Sexuality, the one I fought to get into. And boy, has it been weird since. Sometimes I have no idea what people are talking about, sometimes I just don't have any thoughts about the readings -- and of course there was the one week about bestiality, during which I almost vomited doing the readings. Good times.

So today I actually spoke, for the second time in five weeks (I made one comment last week). When I talk, I feel like George Chauncey looks at me with doe-eyes that say, "That's right, Claudia -- you can do it!" Which makes me feel both pathetic and empowered. I realize that George Chauncey may be looking at me the same way he looks at everyone else.

So there's this girl in class I find to be irritatingly hyper-critical. She always says relevant things, and I even agree with her, often enough. But I still find her kind of negative. So today when I spoke it was to disagree with her, and I think I disagreed with her in a bitchy tone. And after our little exchange, I wondered if I should say something like, "Hope you didn't think I was jumping on you." But I decided instead to let it go. Because if people think you're a little bitchy, they actually give you a lot of leeway in terms of your behavior. So in retrospect, this was pretty good class.

I ate so much Indian food just now, I just may explode.

I don't like reading about slavery or rape, but I am currently reading about both of those right now, and it makes me sad. About humanity. And not in a facetious way. I am really, really sad right now.

I have decided that, in the future, I will give Beyoncé more credit for having talent.

Okay, I didn't learn time management last week, and I've been crazy as hell since Saturday. And that is just not enjoyable. So I'm starting next week's reading tomorrow, and I'll be getting started on the three papers I'll have due between now and spring break. Did I just say three papers? Jeez, that's annoying.

You know what just happened right now? I just skipped forward to "Why Georgia" on my John Mayer playlist, because I haven't listened to it in quite a while, and I realized that I haven't listened to it in quite a while! What a difference from a year ago, when it was all I listened to. My life has so many fewer questions in it. Maybe I have got it down! You know, for right now.

If I wake up dead tomorrow, it's because my reading is killing me.

A few notes:
1. Is it just me, or has Renee Zellweger's face gotten less distinctive? I saw pictures from her new romantic comedy, New in Town, and I dunno -- somethings's off.

2. I'm applying for internships at museums this summer, and I am bitter about the amount of work I'm having to put into applications for UNPAID positions. Recommendations, transcript(s), the whole shebang. One requires a 2-4 page essay, and my first thought was to write in very large type, "ARE YOU SERIOUS?" I had to do this much work to get into graduate school, and that's a commitment of 5+ years. And they pay me. I am so frickin' bitter about this. I hope that doesn't come across in the application. Or that if it does, they'll see on the stupid transcript I have to submit that I am in a doctorate program.

3. Musical acts I've discovered (via Pandora) that are just a little too much for me: Bread, Jimmy Buffett. Something to do with the 70s, but I can't put my finger on it. They're too much of something.