Friday Night in Grad School

I just got back from Hanna's apartment in Allston (which will be mine also come May!), where we drank a lovely zinfandel, ate baked potatoes, watched Mansfield Park, Miss Austen Regrets, the last third of A Room With a View, and played a lively game of Name That British Actor(tm). I am usually a lousy competitor, but I won full marks (and lots of chocolate kisses) tonight for identifying an obscure character from Miss Austen Regrets as the terrifyingly brutal Mr. Grandcourt from Daniel Deronda (2002).

It was a sorely needed Friday evening respite after a dizzying week of academic settling-in. I met with my history professor this afternoon about my research project--in its current incarnation (subject to change in the face of extant primary sources), I plan to consider the question of who Euro-Americans, particularly Euro-American feminists, considered to be "fit" mothers and what they saw as proper mothering during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I want particularly to focus on Indian Schools and white women's involvement in the attempt to assimilate Native Americans into white culture through forcible removal of children from their birth homes.

Earlier in the week, Aiden and I had the pleasure of testing out the oral history recording equipment on one another in practice oral history interviews; once I learn how to edit the digital audio files, I might try to upload a few clips and post them to the site, just so you can check out our bumbling attempts--I, in particular, have this habit of throwing my hands around when I'm talking and jostling the table when I get excited, which I fear leads to unproductive background noise.

Tomorrow, I'm buckling down to run test OPAC (Open Public Access Catalog) database searches for my Cataloging class, with the carrot at the end of the day being Benjamin Britten's opera version of The Turn of the Screw which Hanna and I are attending at the Boston Conservatory Theater. Review to follow soon!