(Originally aired 2021/05/15 - listen here)
Introduction: The Joy of Research Puzzles
What do we know about history? How do we know what we know? And how do we go about figuring out the facts behind the things we think we know?
I'm a bit tired and want to post this and go to bed, so nothing extra clever or thoughtful today. I was experimenting today with dictating the entry directly into my Mac's speech-to-text function, rather than dealing with the intermediary of scribblings on post-it notes. I'll see how it works for this book. It's fascinating how different methods of extracting and summarizing information require different mental processes. But I have to say: not having to do so much writing/typing in the process is nice.
(Originally aired 2021/05/01 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for May 2021 and welcome to episode 200!
I was a bit worried that Klein's book was going to be more on the naval-gazing lit-crit side of things, but I ended up enjoying it a lot (even though I did quite a bit of skimming). While Klein does spend a lot of focus on issues of literary genre (even when discussing historic individuals), I think that -- like the way I frame the focus of the LHMP -- it can help in navigating between questions of historic context and personal identity.
I didn't get even one chapter up last week, much less completing Klein's book. The day-job was kicking my ass and I pretty much tossed everything else out the window. But let's get Sapphic Crossings finished this week, shall we?
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 199 – What’s the Difference between Lesbian and Sapphic? - transcript
(Originally aired 2021/04/17 - listen here)
Introduction
What is the distinction between lesbian and sapphic?
I keep forgetting that I meant to put all the commentary related to the publications themselves in a blog field that keeps that commentary tied to the "official summary". So sometimes I have to go back and "fix" things later. (Like today.) In fact, there are a lot of LHMP entries where I keep meaning to go back and systematically sort out where the various bits of text should go.
While the dual meaning of "beard" that Klein plays with in this chapter may have been the inspiration for combining the motifs, I'm not sure I agree that there's a meaningful connection in that historic era between facial hair and the use of courtship scripts to bolster one's public identity. Both existed; it's the direct connection that feels anachronistic.
I have several quite recent publications (the current book is from 2021) that address the intersection/overlap of female same-sex encounters and trans-masculine experiences in history. I thought it would make an interesting thematic group to cluster them as a series. (It may take more than one month, though I'm going to try to do multiple posts each week to get through more quickly.) A great many of the pulications the LHMP has previously covered in the range of cross-dressing, gender disguise, gender change, and transgender identity are rather dated.
Including artwork in the Lesbian Historic Motif Project is a tricky project, especially when I don’t have a publication to cite as a source, but only my own attempts at reconstructing a context. But this lovely item is worth going to the effort for. If anyone knows more about the historic context of the people involved, I'd love to be able to add to the discussion of how this image was perceived and received by contemporaries.
