I'm gaining a new appreciation for the structures and rituals of friendship that are depicted in 18-19th century diaries and correspondence. We're currently seeing how fragile the focus on "face to face" personal relationships can be, and how we are strengthened and maintained by friendships engaged in at a distance. My blog posts and facebook statuses and zoom chats are, in essential ways, the equivalent of 19th century women writing long, intimate letters to women who they might see in person only once a year, but who stood larger in their emotional lives on an everyday basis.
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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 45a - On the Shelf for April 2020 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2020/04/04 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for April 2020.
Today's blog continues my mini-series on female friendship with an article that challenges the image of "Romantic Friendship" as a reflection of, rather than a prescription for, women's relations with each other in the 18th and 19th centuries.
I'm entering my fourth week of working from home under Social Distancing. We've entered the phase where it feels like just a few days and forever. I hope you're all doing well, both physically and emotionally. Build and maintain those friendships that sustain you. Our ancestors knew just how vital they are.
Ordinarily, I don't put a lot of my personal life into the blog here. That's what twitter and facebook and my Dreamwidth journal are for. But on the off chance that I have readers of this blog who don't follow me elsewhere, here's a quick update. I'm entering my third week of working from home as a epidemic-slowing measure. I don't know if the language is common elsewhere, but here in California it's being referred to as "shelter in place"--a term more often used for things like chemical releases, wildfire air quality emergencies, and the like.
It's a tribute to how disrupted the normal patterns of my life are at the moment, that I failed to post this on it's sheduled Monday (though I did remember I needed to at several points in the day). As of last Wednesday, I'm under direction to work from home until this whole pandemic thing sorts itself out.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 44c - Movie Review: Portrait of a Lady on Fire - transcript
(Originally aired 2020/03/21 - listen here)
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 44d - Bertolina Guercia - transcript
(Originally aired 2020/03/28 - listen here)
When we look for queer women in history, how do we know what we’re looking for? How will we know when we find them? If we go into the historic record with a preconceived idea of what queer people’s lives were like--what their hazards and joys were--will we recognize what we find?
Today's post kicks off a series of publications that revolve around the concept of friendship, especially same-sex friendships.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 44b - Interview with Catherine Lundoff of Queen of Swords Press - transcript pending
(Originally aired 2020/03/14 - listen here)
An interview with Catherine Lundoff about her small publishing house, Queen of Swords Press
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This article winds up my topical group of articles related in some way to Sappho. Next week I plunge into a two-month series of books and articles focusing on the topic of friendship and how it relates to women's same-sex relationships.
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