Upon the discovery of John Pierpont’s The American First-Class Book; or, Exercises in Reading and Recitation. Selected Principally from Modern Authors of Great Britain and America, and Designed for the Us of the Highest Class in Public and Private Schools. This is one of many American readers of the period (the 1830s-1850s), but the only one signed: “Abby May Alcott” (that’s Louisa’s little sister) and certainly the only one with the following scribbled note tucked inside the pages: "Please excuse Abbie for being late.--E.S. Alcott.” I have to assume that the note is from Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, another Alcott sister who died at age 23. The thing that cracks me up about this note is that it reminds me so much of the dynamic between Meg and Amy in Little Women. We all remember the episode of the pickled limes in the novel, right? Amy brings the tasty treats – and contraband – to the schoolhouse and is busted by the teacher who gives her a few hand lashes. This is the last straw for Amy in school, and Mrs. March, disgusted with her treatment, pulls her out. Beth (Lizzie), who has never been able to attend school because of her shyness and weak constitution, becomes her compatriot in home-schooling thereafter. That this note of excuse for Abbie comes from Lizzie’s hand suggests the latter’s overseeing her sister’s scholarly behavior. Or perhaps it was just pretty cool to hold the book that lay in the Alcott household, too see little Abby’s checkmarks next to certain selections. This discovery followed another cool one of yesterday, when I finally located something I thought existed but could never before find (below). It’s a Louisa M. Alcott reader for fourth-grade public school students, featuring really bizarre tales that often include really bizarre depictions of learning (by, for example, porcelain dolls and children made of bread…). I have long since been wanting to make claims about the way that Alcott circulated in actual curriculums, but I’ve struggled to find sufficient proof. This find goes a long way. Now if only the writing would follow….

at AAS

As tired as the subject is, I’ve spent a lot of time of late trying to figure out why dissertating feels so daunting to me. I see others do it everyday. I live with a dissertating roommate. I date a dissertating boyfriend. Many of my friends have dissertated to the point of completion. And still, it feels utterly overwhelming to me, and I’ve become fixated on the desire to pinpoint the moment when writing went from something that gave me pleasure – and in this weird blogisphere and in my personal letters it still does – to the nadir of my existence. Sadly I’m beginning to think it might just be the aggregate effect of six years of graduate school, several relationships with writers, and a slowly dwindling conviction about my innate ability. But as is often the case, as I was trying to articulate this last night to the aforementioned dissertating boyfriend, I realized that there’s this radical disjunction between my continued ability to make strong claims orally (my inclination is not to shy away from even somewhat hostile conversations) and my writing paralysis. I suspect that the inevitable record of the latter terrifies me, that I could be looked up, proved wrong, laughed at. In the former I can still muster energy and concentration, knowing that no one remembers any conversation for that long, though perhaps it may be wholly the result of being a fairly social-competent women in a field of social incompetents. That may be unfair to say, but come on. Talking aside, I think I’m also missing the key to writing: bravado (or something more like necessary arrogance). I know I once had it, or at least a healthy dose of confidence in the fact that I had something to say and that I could say it in a compelling way. Now all I can think is that while I may have something I think I want to say, I don’t trust that it’s right or interesting or relevant, and I certainly don’t trust that I can write anything in a compelling way (writing about not writing aside). I have to believe, though, that there must be a way to get it back. I keep hoping that I might stumble across a book or a person who could clear this all up, who could tell me to take two vitamin E capsules and to switch shampoos and then whoosh I’d be cured...

the two modes

shh... covert photography at the Boston Public Library

as i've finally taken up residence at the american antiquarian society (a very strange place, indeed), i've had reason to reflect on my gendered scholarly activities of the last couple weeks. the first is of the last post, working in the houghton library, a place where it seems like donating your left kidney wouldn't be enough to win you the respect of the research staff. i find myself so tense when i'm there that i worry that i might be literally looking at the manuscripts wrong. i expect to be chided at any moment (as i was for wearing my coat in last week: "your coat constitutes a container and must be removed immediately!" sheepishly i tried to explain i had no coat and that the guilty coat at the end of the table was not mine. it didn't seem to matter (getting yelled at for doing nothing wrong reminds me, by the way, of getting yelled at in the Prague post office every week for a semester because i continually offered too much money for postage). perhaps unfairly, i think of the houghton as a very masculine -- and muscular -- institution, housed in a university whose former president reminded us all that women are innately less constituted for science. now compound this experience with a truly baffling conversation i had yesterday with a very well-known historian. we started talking about alcott and he went on and on about this anti-catholic story that Madeleine Stern refused to publish with the other thrillers because she didn't want her beloved little woman to suffer from a damaged reputation. the historian went on to describe the story -- which actually sounds quite fascinating -- in great detail. i told him that i was teaching a course on alcott next semester and that i'd love to use the story. this is where the tenor of the discussion changed. he could not, of course, give me the citation. he'd been hoping to publish something on the story for a couple years and couldn't possibly give me the damned name of the story before his non-existent article comes out. what?! as annoyed as i was about his reluctance, i tried to smile and keep up the friendly banter. he then went on with this other tale about this story-paper writer who published a dozen stories set at a coed academy in the 1860s. again he described the stories as essentially perfect for my dissertation. i was practically drooling when he talked about how the group of stories offer a radical critique of institutional learning in the period, etc. but then guess what? yup, when asked for the damned author's name, he gave me this stupid grin and refused. that piece would definitely need to be published before he could share those details. are you kidding? i was baffled. here i am a j.v. academic in the throes of dissertation misery and he's a senior professor in the 6th inning of his career and he won't share the fucking name of an author in fear of my scooping him. come on.

so as troubling as these two experiences were, i want to offer two others that set these in bold relief. last week i spoke with another historian who is working on a book-length study of the society that i've been investigating. i got her name from the curator at the rutherford b. hayes presidential library and emailed her several questions about anna ticknor and her society. we ended up having a two-hour phone conversation -- on her dime -- about her research and mine. she made a lot of great suggestions, questions i should be asking myself, and modes of analysis possible given the sources. she offered to send me her work and she encouraged me to call with other questions (she also, by the way, mentioned that helen horowitz -- a historian i really admire -- is also at work on a book about the society, reminding me that it was probably a good idea not to center the whole dissertation on it). i hung up the phone with her excited to have someone else to speak with, another person who actually cares about this work. likewise, i spent last wednesday at the Schlesinger library, hoping to look at Charlotte Perkins Gilman's school work from her time in the society. I approached the circulation desk with my normal anxiety about procedure, but was greeted by a lovely woman who asked a dozen questions about my research, showed me the manuscripts that i wanted to see, and offered to scan them for me (she even gave me a cd). she even thanked me for using the collection! it was like the houghton turned on its head. when i mentioned to her that the schlesinger was a real improvement on the houghton, she just smiled and said "that's what we've been told." So i ask, what's up with snooty libraries and greedy academics? I know that I often make dangerously loose claims about many things, and I don't mean to suggest that male academics are bad and women are good (that's silly, i know), but this week has suggested that perhaps we all in the field could be a bit kinder and more generous (or perhaps i should deliberately try to have experiences like the former so as to hasten my academic exit).

glad to have that off my chest. more from AAS to come....

taken covertly at the houghton. shh.

Back at the Houghton Library on a wonderfully crisp autumn morning. After an early morning asthma attack (which was followed later in the day by a post-frosty run asthma attack), I set out to navigate once again the absurdities of the Harvard libraries. I thought today would be relatively simple because I went thinking that I wanted to see four letters Anna Ticknor (the matriarch of the society I’ve been thinking about for awhile now) sent to Sarah Orne Jewett. I had thought – wrongly – that the letters would illuminate Jewett’s time as a student in the society. Not so, instead they mostly feature Ticknor’s obsequiously tripping over herself to figure out why Jewett never returned some darn book from the society library. But she does delightfully conclude one letter from Lenox, Mass (a place I used to love to drive to for brunch and good yarn when I taught in Lakeville, Connecticut): “Here everything is lovely, the foliage unusually fine the weather very cool, and the world in great glory, the world of nature I mean, for the reign of fashion has not begun yet.” I couldn’t agree more.

I know, I know, it’s been a long while. In the past three weeks I definitely decided to 1. Write my dissertation as quickly as possible, 2. Not write my dissertation and get the fuck on with my life, 3. Write my dissertation as painlessly as possible, and finally, 4. To seriously reconfigure my relationship to my work. Part of #2 was the decision to pretend that this blog never happened (and really that the last six years haven’t happened either). But it seems that somehow I just keep going, if only to avoid having to be 40 and plagued by self-loathing that I didn’t write the damned thing.

In a fit of rage and anxiety – that lovely combination that makes me yell at my dog and run five miles a day – I decided that it would be a good idea to level with my advisor this week:

“I need you to know that I can’t, or rather don’t know how to, or maybe don’t want to write my dissertation.”
“and you think you’re alone in this anne, that you’re the only one who has ever struggled in this?”
“well, I don’t know, everyone else seems to be sailing along.”
“get over yourself, anne. now.”

I then went on to sob while she then reminded me (with equal parts annoyance and complete confidence) that this process was bound to suck for me, that I’d struggled with debilitating anxiety for the entire year before my exams, and that she was frankly surprised that I’d made it this far without a complete breakdown in her office. And so I left, knowing that I’d hang with it, knowing that it would indeed be a struggle, and even that periods of easy writing would be infrequent at best. But nevertheless I’d keep on.

Now I’m determined to rethink the way I think about my writing. Of late, I’ve stared at the screen and cried because every sentence feels impossibly difficult. The architecture of each paragraph haunts me. I obsessively worry that I know not even enough to make common-sensical claims. So it’s time for operation behavior modification:

1. write in 30 minute blocks with five sentence goals, i.e. not the pressure of a full paragraph.
2. if said writing is actually completed, allow myself to do whatever I want for an hour.
3. if said writing is not completed, force myself to do whatever I want for an hour.
4. do not even attempt to write in a linear progression; just choose a bit of material and start recording observations.

That’s the plan for now. We'll see.

p.s. thanks heather for egging me on.

i know, i know. it's been quite a hiatus these last few weeks. day after day of transcribing documents has evoked little of interest and certainly nothing worth sharing. by the light of this photo, you'll see that i've returned to my library carrel at UNC. i had planned to be here only briefly and then depart again for new england, but life's complications -- involving a degenerating arlo and a friend who has inexplicably decided to renege on his dog-sitting promise -- mean that my plans have had to shift. i'm still hoping to get to the american antiquarian society in november, but my departure will necessarily be delayed. so in the meantime, i'm plugging away on my work on the society to encourage studies at home. i've reached that awkward (though if i were a better person i would say "exciting") stage of needing to figure out how to assimilate all that i've gathered into a chapter that in any way jives with the project as a whole. i think i'm always hopeful that i may be struck by some relatively benign form of lightning. i'm also having to face serious alcott revisions. i don't think i need to say any more about that...though it has meant that i'm finally engaging with reader-response criticism, which i'm sad to say, i somehow escaped during my course work. i worry that it often feels like i'm most compelled by that which is hopelessly passe, but who can resist it?

you know you've been away from home too long when the season starts to change and you're without autumn clothes. northern michigan turns chilly in september, often starts snowing in october, and is truly disgusting until april. so i'm on the cusp of real change. the leaves can be incredible here, though, and i've already noticed small bursts of red and yellow behind the asylum where arlo and i go walking. but i have only one sweater and its holes are growing -- so much so that i'm currently feeling sheepish about wearing it to visit my 89 year old grandfather tonight.

i've been starring at the computer screening for almost a week, transcribing hundreds of digital photographs of text that i took in the Boston Public Library archives in the summer of '06. most of them are quite good, but others are miserable -- poor photography compounding poor nineteenth-century handwriting. i'm nearly done transcribing (one more day!) and will then get to plot out my chapter on this correspondence society.


I'm maybe headed back to the chap in two weeks...in time to catch the end of summer in the South but after the extreme heat passes. not looking forward to another long drive...

p.s. Maura -- you can get Whitman's Brooklyn Eagle pieces in his The Gathering of the Forces. It's two volumes and I picked them up a few years ago at the Bookshop on Franklin St for less than $20.00. Back then they had another set as well.

I've got the spots. Perhaps you can see them, perhaps not, but they're all over my face. Little bumps everywhere. I was getting ready to chalk this up to the blended salad that I've been eating (drinking) for lunch (it's a really very vile meal, but one by which I manage to consume 4 cups of greenery). In any case, I think I've ruled out the blended salad (and the peach pie I made yesterday) and am now debating between excessive indoor sweating from the treadmill in my mother's basement (i should be clear: i sweat profusely on it; the machine itself doesn't sweat) or reading Whitman. While the former would seem the more obvious choice, I'm going with the latter. I've been feeling that overwhelming sense that thinking about Whitman is often like thinking about vomit -- it just pours and pours and pours out, and in all the pouring, it flattens itself. I also have had no access to the prose from my childhood hamlet of Traverse City, Michigan. What does it mean to be in a place where a girl can't even get her hand on Whitman's letters? So instead of pulling out my hair, I've ordered a couple of volumes of prose and correspondence (NYU has recently released all their Whitman texts -- Daybooks, Notebooks, Unpublished Prose, Letters, etc. in paperback). In the meantime, I've been transcribing all of my notes from the records of a cool homeschooling society that was fascinating and will be another chapter. In fear of jinxing myself, I don't want to talk too much about it. But suffice it to say, in 1880 their American history and American literature curriculum (mind you, almost no other school or college would teach anything called "American Literature" for almost another two decades) included the likes of Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Washington Cable, Catherine Maria Sedgwick...and the expected Longfellow, Bryant, et. al.

turning to whitman...

See that hint of pleasure? I sent off my Alcott chapter yesterday. The ending is still unclear and I'm a bit confused about how to tie it all up, but for now I'm putting it aside (that is until I get some feedback). So for the first time in 11 months, I get to turn to something other than that damned Little Woman.

It feels exciting, actually exciting to begin on the Whitman chapter. Part of this comes from my almost complete lack of experience with Whitman. Sure, I've taught him and read him, but unlike my lovely friend Maura, I did not have a picture of him taped to my locker in high school -- which, by the way, is a sure sign that she is doing the right thing in life. I don't know the field or the major criticism, but it feels so fantastic to have it ahead of me. For all you Am. Lit folks, what great Whitman work do I have to read? I'm delighted to report that I have yet to locate any work on Whitman and education -- which may suggest the failure of my search terms, the irrelevance of the topic, or luck for the first time.

p.s. working today in the converted asylum in my hometown... perhaps I'll post my writings about it at some point.

i've escaped the angel! just as i was starting to feel antsy about finding a place to work away from the angel -- and eager to find one damn place with a good cup of tea in michigan -- i realized that there's a new and strangely perfect tea house six blocks from my mother's house. so now i sip on a lovely oolong and read through the chapter, which is nearly complete (maybe 2 or 3 more days) and prepared to send it off to my wonderful adviser who is likely ready to fire me for all my ridiculous delays. but it's coming along and i'm in the process of finalizing my boston research plans...a good day indeed.

What does it mean when you think you've been doing better work -- you've been feeling oddly good and content in the process -- and then you go back and read that work that you thought was so improved and you want to poke your eyes out because it's really no better than the other crap you were writing? Does it mean that you're simply a malcontent who will never feel satisfied? Is it the gods trying to tell you that even at your best you should hang it up? Is it that you've lost all perspective? Is it that damned dissertation demon whose strategic torture has simply gotten the better of you?
Whatever it is, this morning i felt like driving to a coffee shop, "accidentally" leaving my computer on a table, and waiting for a thief to relieve me of the burden. That way i could throw up my hands and say "well, there's no going back to it now." But instead, i sit at my mother's dining room table, with arlo at my feet, and the strange pastel angel looking down at me as i type. Come on Christian symbols, work your magic, save me from my writing angst.

as the semester opens in chapel hill, i find myself sitting in the public library in my hometown thinking how lovely it feels to finally -- for the first time in nine years -- have a semester free of teaching. i'm shocked by how much more i enjoy the writing and working on the dissertation when i'm not overwhelmed by preparing classes, grading papers, answering the needs of students. i supposed this must be why professors love and need sabbaticals so much. it also reminds me that my department needs to make dissertation funding a priority for students trying to finish. and while i had been really looking forward to teaching an Alcott class next spring, i'm beginning to feel like playing hookie is even better.

my time in the UP -- that's the Upper Peninsula for all you midwestern neophytes -- was wonderfully productive and i finally (after a pathetic year of pulling out my hair) came to see my project much more clearly. in fact, i think i finally reached an awareness of my work that i suspect my committee has believed that i've had all along. the easiest way to articulate this breakthrough is to say that i realized the limitations of didactic readings of 19th cen. texts (i'll ultimately argue that in didactic texts the content of the lessons trumps the form of teaching) and realized that alcott (along with my other figures) is far less interested in lessons as such and much more invested in methodology or pedagogy. After all, method can be translated broadly whereas particularized right feelings cannot be. I'm now working through this process of reading Little Men against the sentimental, didactic grain, which means concentrating my attention on its trope of reading lessons. It has meant that I needed to entirely rewrite my chapter (and ultimately toss out 95% of my year's research), but this seems like the right decision. so for now, the plan is to avoid chapel hill until the heat passes and until i complete this project (which i hope to do in the next week). and then make a quick trip to north carolina to drop off the pooch, meet with the adviser, and finalize plans for a research trip to boston in october.

more from the UP

freedom of the open road
the neighborhood:

public transportation

beach-side reveries

up north

Arlo and I have settled into our quarters in Jacobsville, MI (pop. 30).

I've come into Houghton for the morning...to check email, search out a fax machine (that seems rather impossible to find at the moment), track down some veggie burgers, and remind myself that the world does continue.

I’ve tried to take a few pictures of the surroundings, to give form to the earlier descriptions. I spent yesterday morning recovering from the 400 mile drive up here from Traverse City, settling in, unloading books, and finally, writing for a couple hours. I think the total silence should do the trick -- not to mention the impetus to create that three soaring bald eagles provides.

the infamous -- and crumbling -- cliffs. the house sits atop the drop.

the main house:

fishing in chilly superior

living room:
view of me:

my view:

Going off the grid

On Thursday I begin my trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It should take about 27 hours – give or take a few – from Andover to Jacobsville, MI. Fortunately, I have the new Harry Potter on audiotape and so I’ll make it to the real bowels of the Midwest before I’m without driving entertainment (save for arlo’s continuous snoring). I’ll be borrowing a place on the shores of Lake Superior for the foreseeable future…or until I want to poke my eyes out because of insufferable loneliness. I hope to make it a month or so. It’s my mother’s boyfriend’s place and he’s been kind enough to let this poor dissertation writer retreat from the world. His description – which cracked me up – is below. Perhaps I'll befriend Harry...

I’ll be officially off the grid – no easy phone, no internet, no wires, no cables, no mass communication distractions. I figure that if I can’t be productive with absolutely no interference, I might as well hang up my macbook and retreat into the woods for good. In hopes of preserving some sanity, I plan to drive into town (40 minutes away) a couple times a week to check email and have meaningful interpersonal communications with the grocery store clerks and the gas station attendants. If you happen to be in the area, don't hesitate to stop by and say hello...

So here's the scoop:
"1. The property sits on a bluff overlooking Lake Superior's Keweenaw Bay. Across the 7-mile-wide bay is the Abbaye Peninisula (the tip of which I find one of the U.P.'s most delightful spots on a sunny, not-too-windy day). Beyond the thin green strip of the Abbaye Peninsula is another bay you can't see, and beyond that you see the Huron Mountains 25 miles away. A little to the south of them, you can see Mt. Arvon, Michigan's highest point. Looking south across the bay you can make out Pequaming, where Henry Ford built a summer house and taught locals traditional English dances on his front porch. On a clear day you can see all the way to the smokestack of the Celotex plant in L'Anse at the bottom of the bay. Looking north you can see what locals call "Rabbit Island" (Traverse Island on maps) because of that animal's abundance there. The island is directly east of the hamlet Rabbit Bay. Beyond the island you see the open water of Lake Superior, which is about 1,200 feet deep in places. A 140-mile boat ride beyond the island will take you to remote Wah Wah, Ontario.

2. Our property extends 600 feet along the bluff, from the outhouse to the south to a giant white pine to the north (where Red Rock Road turns due north). The bluff is high enough to be quite dangerous. Don't stand too close to the edge, as parts are undercut and may crumble.

3. There's a cabin on the bluff you may enjoy staying in. Another pleasant place I like to read and sleep is the nook in the dormer on the second floor of the house. It has a sweeping view of the bay and mountains beyond. Late at night you can see the flashing light of the Huron Lighthouse on one of the 3 little islands just east of the tip of the Abbaye Peninsula. North of the cabin is a screened-in porch on the bluff with a good (and safe) viewing platform from which you can look down in the water. Sometimes a pair of loons swim past, diving periodically for fish. Eagles and hawks frequently fly along the coast (we have to keep an eye out for them when Stan goes out because one could easily swoop down and snatch him away).

4. There is no cell phone service in the area.

5. It's been a dry summer. Every other day or so it would be nice if you would water the day lillies next to the sauna, the herbs in the garden on the south side of the house, and the marigolds just south of the garden. Also, Harry would probably appreciate your watering his several marijuana plants and potato plants next door.

6. If you want to explore the area, there's an historic quarry across the street about a quarter mile down the mown drive past a summer cottage. (See photos on living room wall of it when in operation in the late 19th century). It suppled some of the highest quality red sandstone in the country, used to build many Keweenaw buildings and shipped as far as NYC to build brownstones and the first Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Entering the quarry is tricky, as most of the rim is sheer and deep. If you head left along the rim, you'll find a place you can make it down (it helps to slide slowly on your butt part of the way). The lush environment is a surprising contrast to the barren landscape seen in the old photos when the quarry was in operation. Nature triumphs in the end."

from indexed.blogspot.com

reading about the horrors of Fruitlands this evening and so the above seemed especially apt.

finding the fanatics

Another day at Orchard House, but sadly, i forgot my camera. Instead, I tried to jot down some of the exchanges I happened to over hear:

This between two gray-haired dames -- one with a thick german accent and the other a boston one --

Boston: "If you grew up not feeling good about all that gender stuff, then Jo's -- who is of course Louisa -- for you."
Berlin: "Women couldn't just go acting like Jo in my father's house."
Boston: "Is that how Little Women saved your life."

Crap, I thought, I missed the prior conversation on Alcott as life saver. But at least I caught the rejoinder:

Berlin: "She [Jo] was the primal source of my passion"

Kinky, huh?

The talk that I had been looking forward to was disappointing, mostly because it was exclusively biographical -- a real hit with the Alcott fanatics (as were the speaker's joke about Bronson Alcott being no Brad Pitt) -- and also a good reminder about what to avoid. But the audience was enraptured, hearing-aids turned to full volume, and a rather rotund but eager fan kept uttering (audibly, very audibly) "yes" and "Ahh" and "yes" and "oh yes" and "umm." It was cracking me up and I exchanged knowing glances with the octogenarian sitting next to me. It seems we were equally bemused and annoyed.

These last two days have reminded me how extraordinary the fanatic can be. She's read everything any of the Alcotts wrote and she accepts it with an unwavering sense of devotion. There's no real room to trouble her neat narrative, reading, as she does, Alcott as minister, mother, master. She evinces a kind of total commitment to that which we, as academics, are trained to be weary. I've realized that there's part of me -- or that there was part of me -- in the fanatic, and on some level it frustrates me that my work has diminished my love. At the end of her talk this morning, Lisa Stepanski mentioned that she thinks all Alcott scholars are engaged with their subject on a personal level, that they play out their own relationships to their father and mother in their work. As she said this, i wanted to stand up and say, "not me, not me," but I suspect that what I really learned from the fanatics today was that I'm as guilty of that charge as anyone. I do wrestle with the legacy of my family when I write about Bronson and Louisa, but I certainly hope those conjurations don't bleed too heavily into my work.

I've spent the last week or so reading and thinking about the shifting notions of childhood in nineteenth-century America. Jacqueline S. Reinier's From Virtue to Character proved a help as did the classics on childhood as a historical category, i.e. Philippe Aries' Centuries of Childhood. I'm realizing how expansive this field is and just how little I know. Having to reconcile constantly my need to get something on paper and my debilitating anxiety about not knowing, about having huge gaps where I need huge stores of information, feels mostly overwhelming. I suspect a healthy dose of ego would help, some sort of transcendental sense of rightness, but alas, I'm stuck with my brain and my nerves.

I spent the afternoon at Orchard House, Alcott's home in Concord, MA. It has been preserved as a museum, and out back still sits the old, stained barn that opened each summer for the Concord School of Philosophy, Bronson Alcott's final rendition of teaching. I heard Sarah Elbert (Hunger for Home) on LMA's engagement with race and imperialism in her sensation stories. I also heard John Matteson read from his not-yet-released (August 2007) book Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. Before this afternoon, I had no idea that this study was about to come out, nor did I know it was even in the works. Panic set in when I walked in a bit late and heard him arguing that Bronson never took advantage of LMA's popularity to jump start his career after 1871. I was frozen for a moment. Isn't this in fact the exact opposite of what I've been arguing? Normally, I would have quickly sat down with a racing heart, took furious notes, and cried on the way home, terrified that as usual, I'd entered the game in the 9th inning. But something strange happened this afternoon: I thought he was sort of wrong. I thought he was misreading Bronson and ignoring the newspaper accounts that I had been reading in the Houghton Library in March. Perhaps this may sound anti-climatic to you competent academics out there, but this was really the first time when I believed that my reading was more accurate than another's, especially someone whose book on the topic is soon to come out (see above). With that said, I've been sitting with the book (I got an advanced copy) for an hour, and so far it's quite good (and he does scoop me on Jesus and Alcott) and I'll probably be panicked by 9 pm. But... I spoke to Matteson afterwards and pressed him on some of my concerns, and he back-pedalled pretty quickly. Hmmm.

I'm headed back to Orchard House tomorrow to hear Lisa Stepanski on LMA and "mother teaching." Rest assured, I'll feel duly incompetent as of noon tomorrow. Also, I'll try to remember my camera (perhaps I can nab a shot of varsity Alcott scholars in barn!).

running thoughts and amendments

okay, so i continued to think about maura's concern about the novel and the way in which i seem to turn it into an actual space as i was running in the andover "sanctuary." this seems essentially to be a concern about the utility of utopian thinking. i'm totally happy to acknowledge that LMA's representations of learning are idealized (and perhaps untenable), but utopias can be usable -- and ultimately pragmatic -- blueprints for the future. so LMA never opened Plumfield (or Lawrence College in Jo's Boys), but as I was trying to think about resonances of her pedagogy in progressive america, my mind drifted to my old pal Jane Addams. Addams claimed that Alcott was one of her most beloved authors and her novels were part of the curriculum at Rockford Seminary where Addams was educated. One of my central contentions about Alcott is that she constructed individual pedagogies for each of the students at Plumfield. For example, when Jo realizes that Dan has a natural proclivity toward identifications in nature (of trees and bugs and things), she offers him a large cabinet where he is to sort his "collections" (might she be thinking about teaching classification?). Jo capitalizes on Dan's treasure trove of prior learning to further the sophistication of his thinking and to integrate new knowledge with the old.

Okay, that's well and good, but you still say that it's only a representation. It doesn't carry the weight of ABA's project. But let's think about Jane Addams -- a devoted Alcott "student" -- less than twenty years after Little Men, she opens her Hull House Labor Museum, and that very project and its attendant pedagogy centers on her ability to meet the "student" (the immigrant child and parent) on his own terms. Instead of imposing a standard curriculum, she enables the immigrants to learn and teach from their own knowledge, experiences, and pleasures. She provides them a space to undertake this learning and she has authorizes their use of it, but then she encourages them to further their learning on their own and with one another.

So I guess I'm thinking that we cannot and should not dismiss what appears to be utopian, because at least in this case we needed Alcott to plant the seed for pragmatic pedagogues like Addams and Dewey. Without a doubt, all of these thinkers recognize that this kind of teaching cannot happen in the classroom (and perhaps that's the mistake that ABA made, thinking that the classroom in 1836 could ever be a space of invention). That I'm willing to acknowledge.

novel v. the classroom

addressing the smart concerns about the novel as a educational tool...

thanks go to maura and aaron for raising some terrific questions about the novel as a mode of education. i'll be thinking about this in the coming weeks, but for now i want to quick react:

1. LMA was a teacher in a classroom in front of living students. While she eventually retired her chalk, she always maintained that what she was trying to do was solve the problem of american education in a real, pragmatic way. but you are all correct, when she was composing, she was free from the all-too-real exigences of the classroom. you are also right to suggest that this genre allowed a level of freedom never open to ABA. but we have to remember that her liberated representations of pedagogy DID enter in a very real way into the American classroom. Her novels were bound as textbooks and assigned by American teachers. So while it may seem that her representations of teaching can never really be fruitfully compared to her father's pedagogy, I would argue that she "taught" in a way not wholly dissimilar to ABA. Teachers, in fact, wrote her letters explaining that they modeled their own teaching after her representations of Plumfield. She, not her father, was credited as the originator of progressive education.

2. as per her publishers: i've never seen anything to suggest that they dictated anything in Little Men. They insisted on a sequel to Little Women, but nothing else.

3. i have no intention of conflating the activities of ABA and LMA. you are all right, it's slippery and my own pedagogical concerns often intrude. but i still believe that it's a potentially fruitful exploration. presumably all of us believe in a very real way in the pedagogical utility of the novel. we're not teaching straight aesthetics, right?

4. i do intend to hook both father and daughter's educational thought to shifting notions of the child in the period. this will help clarify their very different textual representations.


5. finally, i have no real desire to destroy ABA and champion LMA. Instead, I want to use ABA to point us to this pedagogical concern (how to allow the child freedom and simultaneous shape her -- as we all want, on some level, to do) and then consider LMA's pedagogical formulations as a kind of answer to that concern. Of course, Plumfield does not exist, but I think that her hybrid pedagogy -- acknowledging and advocating a central authority and only then opening a space for children to guide their own learning (in the end of Little Men Dan and Demi have struck a deal without Jo's knowledge to teach one another. Dan will teach Demi natural history and Demi will teach Dan self control and christian ethics) makes sense to me. As a teacher, I never forget my authority and I know that wherever I stand in the classroom, I'm the one standing. But when I put on a charade and pretend that the students are calling the shots, we all know it's a ruse and they seem to resent the false sense of control. Perhaps LMA is right, that only when we leave the schoolhouse -- and go inside the novel or outside into nature -- can we actually drop resolve the problem of authority.

but these are just quick reactions off the top of my head. more to come.

I can't thank you enough for engaging with me on this project. I've always said that I'm no good in isolation.

--Anne, not the autodidact.

revised thinking

This is a call to all those of you who read the miserable draft that was my Alcott chapter. For the last week I've been walking around Andover racking my brain for a way to rethink the chapter. I've finally come to this rough formulation and now I need a bit of feedback. For those of you patient readers of the previous draft, does this seem a more promising line? I have no idea how I'll use all of my work on circulation, but in any case.....

Beginning with Rousseau and continuing today, teachers have struggled with the inevitable dilemma of trying to free the child from the strictures of education based on indoctrination while simultaneously shaping her at the same time. I want to show the ways in which Bronson Alcott's early attempts at the decentered American classroom expose the stakes of this pedagogical conflict, trying as he was to elicit the child's natural intelligence and goodness without realizing the very ways in which his attempts at drawing out the child became the tools through which he too fell into a kind of indoctrination. After using Bronson Alcott's teaching as the means by which I work through the stakes of this problem, I will them turn to Louisa's pedagogy as an answer to this problem. Her janus-faced pedagogy -- both recalling her father's work and heralding progressive education -- resolves the problem of shaping the child while empowering her to control her own learning. Her pedagogical hybridity earnestly acknowledges and honors the traditional authority of the teacher and authorizes the child as a master of learning worthy of transmission to her peers. Somehow, of course, I will have to face the fact that our ardor for her pedagogy is tempered by the constraints that Bronson Alcott faced in the classroom, a space endowed with the legacy of the teacher as the central authority. It seems that the novel itself is a privileged site of pedagogical freedom unconstrained by the physical and pragmatic limitations of the schoolhouse.

Otherwise, teaching Benito Cereno and facing the above dilemma.

place and space

I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve had such an auspicious start with my students this summer (which is not to say that things will continue this way, especially because we're onto Benito Cereno this week). As far as I know, just one thing has changed this year. I’m teaching in a room with a large seminar table (i.e. Harkness table) instead of moveable chairs. So 16 of us (14 students, 1 TA, and me) face each other directly, and no one can risk falling asleep, zoning out, staring at the clock (there isn’t one). There’s simply no place to hide. But beyond making classroom management cinch, students naturally direct their response to one another. Instead of the teacher at front and center, any student can be – literally and metaphorically – at the head of the table. My seat is no different than theirs, suggesting, I suppose, that my ideas are of equal relevance. But I should be clear: I don’t absolutely buy into exclusively student-centered pedagogy. After all, my instincts tell me the instructor should not shy away from sharing her accumulation of knowledge when it’s needed to elucidate a particularly tricky concept or inscrutable stanza.

Most of my students come from schools with moveable desks, and the change to a single table would seem to force a student to shift his conception of his role as a student. One behaves differently at a table with others than she does at an island desk alone (i.e. she could be carving KISS in zig-zagging letters into its laminate top without the teacher noticing). Coupled with this kind of action switching is the historic heft of the table, generating, it seems to me, some sense that sitting around it may inspire unusually keen insights.

I can’t imagine a way to transport the seminar table into the public school classroom of 35 students. But I want to try to think about why it feels so different discussing around a table compared to at desks pushed together in a circle.

Photos to come later, I promise.

On the Harkness method: http://www.exeter.edu/admissions/147_465.aspx

group "dissertating" on the pease house porch. take a good look, this one's going to get a job in 6 to 9 months.

my spartan summer office.

The academic placement gods seem to have been with me this summer. After feeling miserable about writing for months now, I show up at Andover, meet my 14 students from 10 countries, and soon realize that they are universally eager, excited, and ready to participate. Today the fairly shy, taciturn Nick from Indonesia was whispering his ideas while Long Island Tawana and Athens Alexia were loudly duking it out about whether or not Gregor in Kafka's Metamorphosis understands more about his transformation than we, as readers, do. No one would have heard Nick, but Nigerian Anthony politely interrupted, turned to the class and commanded: "Yo guys, Nick here has somethin' to say. Let him talk." Nick, in at a nearly imperceptible volume proceeded to explain that Kafka makes Gregor's transformation vague (is he vermin? a bug? a beetle? a rat?) such that as readers we are in the same state of confusion as Gregor. As he's trying to figure himself out physically, we gain measured insights as he does. No dramatic irony. No privileged position. Equality between vermin and reader. I then asked one more question about pronouns and the class managed a 30-minute discussion with no prompting, no clues, no disclosures. As I've said to others recently, I think I'm beginning to accept the fact that creating such a class has very little to do with my actions and so much to do with enabling a critical mass of students to develop this sense that engaging fully is a really very cool thing to do. They, of course, have to feel like it was their idea to feel that way as well. You know something extraordinary is happening when they stay after class today just to tell you how much they enjoyed the poetry explication.

Can someone please remind me why I would ever take a 4-4 at the University of No Man's Land at No Mansville? A life of this would be just dandy, if you ask me...

that's me fanning myself. it's 96 degrees and no air conditioning here.

i apologize to the hoards of faithful readers (all 4 of you) that i've been so remiss in updating this. after a rather disheartening writing group meeting, i drove to andover to begin my 7th year of summer teaching. as this place usually gives rise to new thoughts about teaching, pedagogical experiments, and inevitable insights about the possibilities inherent in teaching in small classes with long periods, i hope to shift my discussions from self-loathing complaints about my writing to brief discussions about summer pedagogy. all the while i'll continue trying to restart the alcott chapter, but i'm hoping to have some good teaching experiences to get my spirits up.

i promise no more extended vacations -- at least not this week.

minor accomplishment take #1: submitted the "complete" (a.k.a. inchoate and incoherent) draft of the alcott chapter to my americanists writing group. that's something, right?

my friends tasha and geoff just left after a lovely weekend visit. they're both incredible and incredibly gifted at telling it the way it really is. tasha (who is herself writing a dissertation -- on 20th af.-am. pulp fiction -- and will certainly have a completely bad-ass job at this time next year) listened as i mocked my own efforts and seemed sympathetic when i bemoaned what seems like my innate inability to write a dissertation at any kind of reasonable pace. but then she looked me in the eye and commanded: "get in the game bruder! i mean you gotta GET IN THE GAME." and then instead of leaving it at that, she kindly read my alcott mess and politely told me to get over myself and get it in the bag. for the first time in months, i feel like getting in the game again. thanks tasha (and thank you geoff for understanding what it would mean to drop out now). this is why i love my friends.

rats, i missed my deadline yesterday. that's me snapping in frustration. but the upshot is that i'm working fairly productively today. it helps that it's 225 degrees outside and i have no desire to partake in my usual outdoor distractions. after all, yesterday i was out walking with arlo in the afternoon and got yelled at for abusing my dog by taking him out in the heat. i tried to suggest that dogs need to go outside to use the facilities even in the summer and that after ten year with arlo i have a pretty good sense of his desires and limitations, but she was having none of it. i kept wondering if she would have stopped me had i been out with a child...

When it feels like there’s no way to break through the endless amounts of horrible writing and get down to the essence of your argument, I highly encourage the use of a little peer pressure. Last night I made a deal with the devil – actually just my very smart and very altruistic friend Katherine – that I would send her what I have at 5 pm today. In fear of utter humiliation, I finally feel eager to figure this chapter out. I figure that after eight years (wow, that’s gone by quickly) of friendship, she’d be pretty lame to bail on me because I can’t seem to get it right with this piece. Hint, hint….

a new simple idea: think less, write more.

yes, it's one of those working-from-bed kind of days: oppressively hot and anxiety-ridden. i'm generally feeling blue about the project. i should be feeling better because mr. mouse is no more (see aaron's brilliant comment on the last post), arlo is happily sleeping, and my adviser thinks the new introduction is better. but instead, i'm feeling that old, antsy sense that i should be doing something (curses on my love for jane addams who did change everything for me). whenever i start to feel this way, i cruise the net for educational think-tank type organizations and then inevitably feel lousy either because there doesn't seem to be anything out there that seems really promising or i realize that i'm unqualified to do anything. but today i discovered education sector. they seem to be doing the kind of research and writing that i really admire. think maybe i should have been a summer intern?

for me, one of the biggest struggles in dissertating is my inclination toward distraction. with this huge, amorphous thing to be done, i'm much more inclined to think about sewing summer skirts, watering the flowers, finalizing my summer syllabus (off to andover in three weeks), and now something else to compete for space in my mind: a mouse! this little dickens (my grandfather's favorite mock insult) has out-witted me. he 1) ate all of the peanut butter off of the trap without getting caught 2) scandalized arlo by eating out of his bowl, and 3) had the audacity to sleep in my bed last night. mouse droppings prove it all. so now what do i do? elena suggested trying that sticky stuff, but she's not here to help deal with the horror of finding a living mouse glued to the kitchen counter. any other ideas? if i don't get rid of this little guy, i fear nothing else will get done. argh. double argh.

this is what it looks like when you get scooped. fuck.

A study at last! After a week of staring at stacks of books and feeling overwhelmed by the chaos, I rallied my strength and made some bookshelves last night and this morning (thanks for the encouragement aaron and maura!). Sadly, only decent fiction (both in literary and book quality) fit in these shelves, and so I still need to come up with something else for scholarship on the other wall. All essays, belle lettres, bibles, theology, and everything else had to go downstairs and mingle with elena’s books.

The upshot is that the excuses are over and it’s time to face the draft again. My advisor gave me many great suggestions last week (and the not-so-great reminder that as it stands I have a small, somewhat lame argument brewing). So it’s back to work in the new space now….

reading the dreadful draft....

a deadline approaches after two days of unprecedented productivity. three tips for dissertation writers: 1. retreat to an internet-free zone and resist all impulses to drive into town just to look up one thing 2. get a bigger desk and put it in front of a window 3. make your adviser threaten you with deadlines. it's funny -- throughout the year i was studying for my phd exams, any number of friends pulled me aside and offered bits of advice (mostly of the order: chill the hell out, anne) and when i began writing the dissertation the same thing happened (this time it was more staid: write everyday, outline first, don't over read). in both cases, i couldn't hear any thing they were saying and i likely resisted all of these suggestions. i'm so stubborn and so entrenched in my own deeply flawed process. this chapter -- which isn't nearly done -- has been about trying to take some of this advice and let some of my neuroses go. today it feels possible.

the new study seem to be just the thing i needed to get me going. i've always known that spaces affect me, and so i shouldn't be surprised that it took changing my space to change my relationship to writing. because my old and little desk wouldn't fit up the stairs, i've stretched a huge board over my filing cabinets to create an appropriately large desk for the large task of dissertating. i can spread everything out and actually SEE how to put it all together -- which isn't, of course, to suggest that it's coming together yet. also a deadline tomorrow (one that was supposed to be enforced on feb. 15) makes me more eager than usual to get the fingers moving.

first day of work in the new place. my study is under the eves -- which seems a place Jo March would relish as well -- and i had been anxious that it would feel claustrophobic. but instead it feels right. i spent the morning reading newish louisa may alcott scholarship, even though i should have been finishing the section of the chapter about her father. i keep having to remind myself of what john mcgowan told me -- that reading is the worst enemy of writing -- but i suspect that's an easier temptation to avoid after you've written five books and could care less what anyone else thinks of your work.

it's funny the way this project works (and works me). yesterday i moaned to a friend that i didn't want to write it, not at all, that i should stop right now, move to a lovely place, and content myself with teaching the children. but today it felt possible again (though, to be frank, still not probable), and i actually enjoyed working through the morning's scholarship. for the sake of my work, i just need more days like today and less like yesterday. unfortunately, what's good for my work often feels at odds with my other desires. but alas, that's life.