Crap, writing about Native Americans in Westerns is a real problem. In summarizing a film, I just had to write, "Unfortunately, that same night a group of Apaches go on the warpath." I hope that doesn't sound snide when it's read; there's just no way to talk about these films without using their own stupid language and ridiculously off-kilter frames of reference.

Okay, I just changed it to, "A group of Apaches staged an uprising." Better.

I have got to write faster.

I finished my Hannah Montana paper, and I'm on to the Beach Party movies. You know -- Frankie, Annette, rock and roll, frolicking in the sand. This assignment is actually a proposal for a longer research paper, and this was a good rehearsal because I have realized that I absolutely don't want to write the longer paper. Critical lesson: Don't choose films to write about based on some vague memory of having found them pleasant at some point in your past. Because sometime in the middle of Bikini Beach, you'll find that you'd rather gouge out the eye on your dominant side than watch five more minutes of this movie. And that moment really sucks, because you have to keep watching, with both eyes, and then, after you're finished, you have to watch Beach Blanket Bingo. Learn from my example, and save yourselves.

My work day:
11am-1pm -- Workshop with visiting professor. Unexpectedly-free lunch; awesome.
1pm-4pm -- Parked in Blue State Coffee, working on Hannah Montana paper when not interrupted by Josh Glick.
4pm-6pm -- Lecture and Q&A with aforementioned visiting professor.
6pm-7pm -- Ad hoc dinner with film studies graduate students.
7pm -2:30am -- Parked in Blue State Coffee, working on HM without interruption because no Josh Glick. Still don't finish though. Damn it.

I'm a little tired now.

I have housing secured!
1. DC for the summer: I will be subletting one bedroom (of a two-bedroom apartment) in Mount Pleasant, from May 25 to August 16. Maybe I've already said this, but I'll be interning at the Anacostia Community Museum, which is a branch of the Smithsonian located in SE DC.

2. New Haven for the new year: Beginning in August, I'll be living in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown New Haven, near Dwight & Chapel. It is SO EXPENSIVE, but since I just cannot live with roommates anymore (after the summer, that is), I'm saying it's worth it to spend 1/2 of my stipend on rent. Because of my increased expenses, I'm looking into jobs next year -- they pay good money around here, $15-20/hour, and I'd only be working 5-10 hours a week.

In terms of my work: Man, I don't know. I thought I had this Miley Cyrus paper figured out, but I haven't at all. The professor gave us a very broad topic, and that may be my undoing. A friend is writing about How I Met Your Mother, and Agnew shrugged and told her -- with some amusement, I imagine, "Here's your rope --" as in, enough to hang yourself with! (Agnew's a BIG fan of metaphors.) He didn't offer me the same metaphor, but my outcome may be the one he anticipated for Andrea...

This week's "readings" for Blackspace & Cinema:
The Chappelle Show (selected episodes)
Dave Chappelle's Block Party (2005)
Inside the Actors Studio (with Dave Chappelle)

Some days Iwant to take people apart at this place. But some days, I sit in the Film Study Center with headphones on and giggle myself into near-unconsciousness.

Also, I was amused by one of Chauncey's comments on one of the papers. I am often reluctant to be critical of the work we read, especially in his class, in which I feel that my grasp on the material is tenuous. So in regards to one article, I posed a couple of questions that the author didn't ask, writing, "In light of Baptist's compelling arguments... these questions seem worth pursuing." And Chauncey's note says, "OR -- does this undermine his entire theory?"

Yeah, I wasn't gonna go there. Also: Maybe my grasp on the material is less tenuous than I think it is.

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 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.

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.

I don't think I updated about my classes for this semester. Well, here's what I'm taking:

Readings in the History of Sexuality (G.Chaunc! That is, Professor George Chauncey.)
This is the one I fought to get into. It's been a little weird. Last time, I just didn't understand the readings (Foucault, et al). And this week I just couldn't figure out what we were talking about, as a class. Were we supposed to be discussing ideas? Interrogating the author's approach? Analyzing sources? Or just talking about everything that the book wasn't and what the author didn't do? Because there was a lot of that.

Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective (Jean-Christophe Agnew -- how great is that name?)
I'm 99% sure that Jean Agnew loves me. And let's be honest, that puts me a long way towards loving his class.

Blackspace & Cinema (Terri Francis)
There are three of us in here -- four, including Terri Francis. In a class this small, you cannot skim the readings and expect that talky girl to carry you through. You have to be that talky girl, every week. It's cool, though. We read James Baldwin this week, and that man rocks.

Theory of TV & Media (John MacKay)
It's an undergrad class, and I'm auditing. I just sit and listen to John Mackay, which is all I want out of life, anyway. Also, on my way to class on Monday night, I nearly stepped on Dr. Ruth. She was attending a film screening in another part of the building. She entered the building just ahead of me, and I heard her talking to her companion, and I was like, "Who else is 3'2" and sounds like that?" Nobody else. Apparently she's teaching a class here this semester.

And as of 5:20pm, my weekend started! What I learned from last week, though, is that if you decide to think of your "four-day weekend" as "time off," you will be reading for 14 hours a day over the next three days. I don't know if I'll ever be able to explain "postmodernism," but graduate school will definitely have taught me time management.

In one class on Wednesday, when we did introductions and summarized our academic interests. You know, "I'm Claudia, and I'm interested in US history and popular media, and I want to understand what the movies mean to people." This girl from East Asian Studies talked about how her work focused "the impossibility of autonomous modernity" within a certain place, I didn't catch which country. But I wrote her exact phrase down so I could remember how it was possible for a sequence of words to mean absolutely nothing.

I'm back in school! First things first: yes, I've worn my boots every day since I got them and will wear them tomorrow, too, and for every forseeable tomorrow.

This week I'm "shopping" classes, so it'll be a few days before I know what I'm taking. The uncertainly of it all, though liberating in its way, can be so nerve-wracking. Case in point: Today I went to the class I've been most excited about, Readings in the History of Sexuality, taught by George Chauncey. It's a graduate seminar, capped at 18. There were at least 25 students in there today, so G.Chaunc asked us to send him an email explaining why we want to take the class. Now, because people are shopping, it's impossible to know who will show up for the next class meeting. Maybe 10 people will decide to take something else instead, and natural attrition will prevent any forced ejections. Or maybe everyone wants to stay and they will all have more compelling reasons than I -- though I can't imagine. Gender is my BFF! I've been waiting all year for this class, no exaggeration, and I've also spent many, many minutes trying to figure out how to get adopted into the George Chauncey-Ron Gregg household. (Ron Gregg teaches in film studies. He *hearts* Hollywood, too!)

I just sent the email, which took me two hours to write because I was trying to find a less desperate way to say, "If I don't let me into this class, then I'm taking my own life. Blood on your hands." It was due in at midnight, or I'd still be working on it. As it was, the time stamp on the email was 11:59pm. It's seriously hard to write 2-3 paragraphs on how a class fits into your graduate work when the answer is, "This course IS my graduate work." It's like describing a color. It's green, dude -- it just IS. Now let me in your class.

I'm writing about two comedies for my British cinema class, Georgy Girl and Morgan, both 1966. I just wrote a sentence about the former movie that gave me pause:

"But rather than failing at being clever, I see the film as succeeding at the level of excess – it is too nonsensical, there is so much forced cheerfulness – so that it expresses, paradoxically, the film’s undercurrent of despair."

I'm writing about a comedy, and I just used the word "despair." The professor is going to think something's wrong with me. Scratch that. She's going to know.

Last night I got the feeling that I would actually be able to finish everything by the time I get on the plane next week. Awesome.

Things that don't help me get to that point:
1. Writing blog entries.
2. Watching episodes of Hannah Montana on Netflix Watch Instantly.

I will quit both of those activities very soon.

To recap Thanksgiving very quickly: I spent a few days in NYC with my sister and her friends; in addition to stuffing ourselves as required for the holiday, we also played hours and hours of games, centrally a card game called Rook. Great way to spend a few days not in New Haven. I also saw Gypsy, the new revival of the classic musical, with outstanding performances, including the leading trio of Tony-Award-winners. At the middle of it all was that whirlwind Patti LuPone, who completely owned "Rose's Turn" (the fabulous finale), as all the great Momma Roses do. That song and "Everything's Coming Up Roses" are the greatest bookends in American musical theater. That's right -- I said it. In the entirety of American musical theater.

Now: Back from Thanksgiving and ready to take on the last few weeks of my first semester of graduate school! Here's what's going on:

1. Right before break, I turned in a final paper -- not due until this Friday -- so I could spend a week doing no work, guiltlessly. I am a WINNER at grad school.

2. My second final paper is for British Cinema -- today was the final class, sadly. I loved that class. I'm writing about Georgy Girl (1966) and Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966) and how they represent youth/family/class/gender roles in the context of British New Wave. In case you wanted to know that.

3. My last final "paper" is actually a website. It's for my Public Humanities class, within which we're encouraged to work toward a project that connects with "publics" outside of academia. (I know -- revolutionary, right?) I'm making a website about "film noir," a term that describes the mood of many post-WWII films, which tended toward nihilism, often featuring an existentialist hero who gets caught up forces larger than he is. Bogart's filmography has the best examples of this -- The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not,The Maltese Falcon (even though it's prewar). You've seen a noir if you've seen any movie in which a man finds himself caught in the web of a dangerous woman and everything happens in low lighting with lots of shadows.

On the website I'm working on, I'm trying to point out that noir wasn't only a mood in films, but that that postwar mood was also expressed through the dramatic radio shows of the same period. What does darkness sound like? Dunno yet; but I'll post the link when I come up with something.

But right now, I'm off to a friend's birthday gathering (yay!) to have a drink and celebrate the slow march toward death, before I return to my room and try to figure out how to describe and explain sound.

Writing papers is even less fun than I remembered.

For The Class in Which I Struggle Constantly, I'm writing my final paper on Evita, the musical film based on the life of Argentine first lady Eva Perón. I've had to start from scratch, since everything I know about Latin America I've learned since I started this class, and as we know, that learning has been a little spotty. I hadn't even seen Evita when I chose it as a topic; I just knew that there was controversy around the film in Argentina, and that it's a musical, and I know I can write at least 15 pages on a musical, since I've done it. More than once.

Starting from scratch, I lack the basic understandings from which powerful conclusions are possible. I've never been to Argentina, so I don't have any first-person impressions from which to try to figure this stuff out. So I contacted my sister, who spent her year abroad in Buenos Aires, just to have some place to start. I asked her what she'd heard about the Peróns, what she'd heard people say about Evita, etc.

Now, as I'm trying to write, I'm running into issues with scholarly conventions around supporting evidence. I have other sources corroborating the fact that Juan and Eva Perón were -- and remain -- massively popular, but the best encapsulation of how a significant population of Argentinians feel about Juan Perón, in particular, was my sister's clear and succint summarization: "Look --" she told me, "sun shines out that guy's butt, okay?"

I cannot figure out how to cite that.