who am I? | so what's this blog for?
why "future feminist librarian-activist"? | issues with comment moderation? | contact me
why "future feminist librarian-activist"? | issues with comment moderation? | contact me
who am I?
My name is Anna and I am the sole blogger at the feminist librarian (formerly titled Future Feminist Librarian-Activist), where I've been blogging since March 2007. I was born and grew up in the city of Holland, in western Michigan, about five miles from Lake Michigan and three hours north of Chicago. The city (and the county it resides in) are politically, culturally, and religiously conservative. My family was not.
For more, see posts labeled family and michigan.
For the first seventeen years of my life I did this thing called home-based education, or unschooling, which, in the beginning no one had ever heard of and thought meant I was playing truant from the local public school, and toward the end everyone had heard of and thought I was a fundie who didn't believe in evolution. Neither were true.
While I was doing that I volunteered at the local historical society and thought I might want to become a museum curator. Then I worked at a local children's bookstore (no longer extant) and figured I might want to run my own bookshop. Slightly later, I decided to try out the whole institutional education thing in the form of an extremely part-time college education, seeing as my father's job got us tuition benefits at the local liberal arts college, and for a while I thought I might become a writer.
Then I realized I was a writer anyway, seeing as I wrote pretty much continually on any and all mediums using a wide variety of character-making implements. And I discovered feminist theory and feminist activism, re-discovered my love for the perspective history provides on current events, and was introduced to the glorious world of cultural history and the history of ideas. Somewhere along the line, I declared my intention to get a degree, majored in Women's Studies and History, spent a semester at the Oregon Extension (Lincoln, Oregon), a year at the University of Aberdeen (Aberdeen, Scotland) and finished the requirements for graduation shortly after my twenty-fourth birthday.
After which I realized how stressed out college made me, spent some time on women's land in Missouri, worked for a semester at a men's college (yup, they still exist) in Indiana, and sold books at Barnes & Noble.
Since I'm a bad activist but a feminist theory geek, find institutional education stressful but love to be involved in learning, I decided feminist librarianship and/or some job involving the care and keeping of feminist activist history might just be a niche in the world I could manage to fill. So I picked up and moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where I enrolled as a graduate student in the Simmons College dual degree program in History and Library Science. I completed my MLS in December 2010 and my MA in May 2011. My scholarly interests include the history of feminist movements and history of education. You can check out my thesis research and download a PDF of the finished product over at the oregon extension oral history project blog.
Since October 2007 I have been working at the Massachusetts Historical Society where I currently serve as the Assistant Reference Librarian. For more about the librarian/archivist side of my life, see the MHS and northeastern blog posts.
I live in Allston, Massachusetts (a neighborhood of the city of Boston) with my partner, Hanna (who blogs over at ...fly over me, evil angel...), multitude of plants and a black cat named Geraldine.
When not working, studying, or blogging (and blog reading), my girlfriend and I enjoy quiet games of scrabble by candlelight, tea, hot showers, reading anything and everything, and mourning the loss of Donna Noble.
so what's this blog for?
For some thoughts on how this blog came to be, see a word from your blogger, a post I wrote on that very issue.
When I made the decision to start graduate school and it became clear I was going to relocate away from West Michigan to the wilds of Boston, Massachusetts in order to do so, I resurrected the website idea in the form of a blog as a way to keep family and friends in the loop.
About the same time, however, I discovered this glorious thing called the feminist blogosphere. I started the blog right about the same time that the Gonzales v. Carhart decision came down from the Supreme court and my fifth-ever blog post (back when I posted a few times a month!) was called Feminist Activism After Gonzales, a sign of things to come.
These days, I make it a point to try and post content at least two-to-three times per week, although I seem to average about fifteen posts a month. Although my family and friends occasionally voice the desire for more personal, less political, my own perception is that I kinda strike a three-way balance between completely personal, stuff that's related to my work/scholarship and books/movies, with the final third being feminist-y political sort of stuff.
This is still a personal blog. I write about stuff that interests me; the stuff I like to discuss with family and friends around the dinner table and with fellow bloggers online. The stuff I wander around thinking about during the day, when my hands are occupied with other work. I process ideas verbally, in textual form. There was a reason my mother handed me my first journal when I was six (and she had a three-year-old and a newborn to look after): I like to converse with people about everything and anything pretty much 24/7 (those who know me would probably say 25/8). This blog is a place where I get to muse about ideas that I've often pondered in more private, journal-type settings, or in academic papers -- except now I get to participate in an active conversation, rather than having those ideas locked away in my own head, moribund from lack of use or external engagement.
As of January 2011 I have served as part of the writing team for The Pursuit of Harpyness.
Thanks for stopping by and helping my brain keep ticking over!
why "future feminist librarian-activist"?
And, well, the name kinda stuck. In large part due to the fact that my eminently talented brother, Brian, designed me a header and created Minerva, my mascot, after patiently listening to my directions to create an image that would convey the authority and bookishness of Marian the Librarian, the energy of turn-of-the century American suffragists, in their particular historical moment, and the scholarly air of a Bloomsbury bluestocking. I mean, once Minnie showed up on the scene, there really was no turning back.
Now I'm a professional librarian, I've changed the title of the blog to the more direct the feminist librarian. This change mirrors the title of my tumblr blog, the feminist librarian reads, where I post shorter quotations and articles of note throughout the week.
issues with comment moderation?
My comment policy is currently under construction.The short version is that this is my blog and, although the internet is a public space (in that everyone can view it), this blog is my space and I get to decide what counts as civil discourse here.
I welcome people who hold opinions different from my own, even those who wish to disagree with me in strongly-worded comments. I will not tolerate ad hominum abuse (i.e. "you're an ugly bitch") of myself, other commenters, or those whose posts I link to. I will not tolerate abusive, dehumanizing language used against individuals or groups of people. It is generally easy to tell when a word like "fag" is being used as a re-appropriated self-referent or in reference to cultural stereotypes or bigotry as opposed to as a term of abuse. You are welcome to use the former, the latter will get your comment deleted.
If you feel your comment has been deleted in error, please feel free to contact me directly at the email address listed below and I will do my best to respond to your concerns.
contact me
I pretty much always enjoy hearing from readers -- the more conversations I get to have about issues I'm passionate about, the better! Feedback, suggestions, complaints, further thoughts, etc., are all welcome. Don't hesitate to comment directly on a post or contact me by email atfeministlibrarian [at] gmail [dot] com
While I don't always respond to every comment on my blog, at this point in my blogging career I make it a point to respond to emails, as long as they are not bullying or abusive (and if you're a bullying and/or abusive sort of person you're not likely to be reading this page anyway, so problem solved!).
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| photograph by Hanna and used with permission |
