January Classifieds for Other Feminisms
Share your reading recommendations, events, job postings, etc.
I’m looking forward to sharing highlights from your discussion of Ross Douthat and Sarah Ruhl on children and kenosis on Thursday. Your comments have been particularly excellent, so I’m doing some brainstorming about how to continue that conversation—possibly inviting a few of you to join me for a written or taped discussion. I’ll also be talking with Douthat himself at Plough’s event on January 21st.
It’s time for one of our classified threads. This is an open forum for you to share reading recommendations, job postings, interesting events, etc. that you think would be of interest to the other 500+ people on the list. (We’ve doubled in size since last time!)
Feel free to define “relevant” broadly—I’ll share highlights next Thursday, but anything you think might be of interest to this list is fair game. I’ll start us off:
Fellowship Opportunity
The Abigail Adams Institute is launching the Wollstonecraft Fellowship—a $20,000 stipend, plus funds for a research assistant. The project focuses on “questions of sexual equality and freedom, as philosophically informed by realist metaphysics, virtue-based ethics, and a Wollstonecraftian understanding of rights grounded in responsibilities.”
Through the Wollstonecraft Fellowship, a promising scholar will be awarded a $20,000 research grant, additional funds to employ a part-time research assistant, and an AAI affiliation for a year to write an academic article or conduct research for a book in this area. Such a scholar would have completed graduate studies (or otherwise demonstrated scholarly prowess) but may not have access to the usual sources of academic funding because he or she has chosen to step out of full time academia or professional work for a time to raise his or her family, or perhaps he or she is seeking to return after having been away for a time.
The application deadline is March 1st, and there are more details on the site. I asked the women behind the project whether it is limited to scholarly books, or someone could apply with a more mainstream audience in mind, and they told me that they might be open to the latter. It’s the first year they’ve offered this fellowship, so err on the side of applying.
Reading Recommendation
Princeton University Press is having a 75% off-sale (nb: it only seems to work for one book per order). I’ve really enjoyed the writing of Caroline Walker Bynum, who has several books on sale in the promotion.
I bet there are other good things in the mix (I’m getting myself a book on scurvy), but it’s very hard to sort through the 1000+ books eligible for the discount, so let me know what you find.
Send in your recommendations of any type, and I’ll be pleased to send out highlights in a roundup next week.
Two book recommendations that pair nicely with each other: Janet Martin Soskice's book, The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language, is a beautiful mediation of a lot of feminist theology. In the first chapter, Soskice discusses how stereotypical portrayals of spirituality often appear to be antithetical to the life of a mother. She writes, “What we want is a monk who finds God while cooking a meal with one child clamouring for a drink, another who needs a bottom wiped, and a baby throwing up over his shoulder” (23).
In that same vein, Natalie Carnes’s recent book, Motherhood: A Confession, is written in the style of Augustine’s Confessions, but from the perspective of a mother writing to her child. I reviewed the book for Front Porch Republic (https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2020/08/ordered-toward-your-becoming-on-natalie-carness-motherhood-a-confession/), and it’s definitely worth the read, as it bridges academic and popular audiences with its beautiful and honest portrayal of motherhood.
It looks like the Princeton sale will apply the discount on several items - you have to fill the cart and only put the code in at the end by the looks of it. Also, only for orders shipping to US and Canada.