The Historian in the Garden
  • Home
  • About
  • C.V.
  • Contact

One Reason Why I Am A Historian and Not a Mathematician

9/24/2017

 
PicturePlease read the entire thread by the awarding-winning astrophysicist (and frequent target of toxic masculinity on the internet), Dr. Katey Alatalo. Link in pic.
Story time: I still recall with bitterness a very specific turning point in 7th grade where the teachers chose who was going to be in the most advanced math section. Mr. Dryer literally stood at the front of the room and with a (perhaps exaggerated) show of nonchalance picked out 7 individuals to be in his class. It was as if he were picking teams for handball or ponies at a track. I was not selected. I had all As.  

I was a grade-grubbing teacher-pleaser and internalized this 'failure' deeply. By high school I embraced being good at humanities--in part because I found amazing female role models that were largely lacking in the math faculty. (Due credit to Ms. Brigance who taught me not only Latin, but ran independent studies in Sanskrit and ancient Greek.) When it came time to think about dropping one of the AP courses from my schedule because taking so many while struggling with depression and varsity running seemed unwise, it was obvious that AP Calculus (and senior year, physics ) was on the chopping block.

In college, after avoiding all the math and science I could (with the exception of environmental studies), I wound up taking higher-level analytic and logic classes for my philosophy major; my undergraduate thesis lay at the intersection of modal logic, set theory, and philosophy of language. I found myself in rooms full of math and physics double-majors, asking about all their other classwork. I particularly admired the femme students among them and often wished I had continued on with math so I could engage more fully with their work. I occasionally longed to be in their topology class too, so I could could talk about the cross-pollinations between that and the set theory we were learning in philosophy. It was at this relatively late stage that it became clear to me:  of course I could have done it! (At least through the B.A.) But nonsense from both outside and inside my own head stopped me starting in frickin 7th grade. 

Picture
Now, I'm not saying I would or could be an award-winning mathematician if it weren't for Mr. Dryer.

I am saying that I am a classic case study in social forces that cause us to have fewer female students in STEM -- and my story is one of the more positive ones! I never experienced sexual harassment or any of the associated discomfort that so often can come with being a female in male-dominated spaces. My supportive and brilliant advisor in Philosophy was male (as were my advisors in the majors I nearly completed in Classics and English). I had examples at every step of the way of brilliant femme friends who were succeeding in math and science. I had parents who encouraged me unconditionally and wanted only the best for me.

But now, even in history, I still experience occasional problems related to my gender. I continue to have "disagreements" with senior male historians who "don't believe" my numerical claims, taken straight from archival research in government sources. While sometimes it is intellectually flattering, it is often distinctly gendered when people are surprised that my 'garden history' touches on 'big' issues of political-economy, capitalism in midcentury America, and doesn't confine itself to social history topics like gender and the home. (I have talked to multiple male historians of gardens who have not shared these experiences.) I have missed out on a significant professional opportunity almost certainly because I declined a date with an influential older male historian. I have suffered from negative student feedback linked to gender.

But I'm not just complaining, I'm working to fix it. As always, I'm proud to be part of the American Society for Environmental History, actively working to tackle gender bias in its ranks, and to serve on the ASEH Committee reviewing the report on this problem (pictured left). I'm also a proud member of the Coordinating Council for Women in History and do my best to support and highlight my brilliant peers of all genders, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds.

All this is to say: screw James Dalmore, the latest New York Times article (that I refuse to link to and give hits), and anyone who claims that we need to seriously consider any arguments for biological differences in STEM aptitude, or aptitude in any human endeavor. We can have those discussions someday on the basis of good science (hopefully produced by female-identifying scientists in equal measure) only once we have removed the social barriers standing in the way of so many brilliant women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups. Prove your specious arguments by making opportunity truly equal and watching what happens. Until then, I really don't want to hear it.

Picture
(Screw these glamour-shots especially. Stop giving this guy a spotlight.)

Looking Beyond Traditional Labor for Labor Day 2017

9/4/2017

 

Or, How the Historical Labor Movement Only Touches the Tip of the Iceberg

This labor day, I have little time for this blog because I need to get back to my own hard work writing and producing scholarship, but I wanted to take a moment to push everyone to think more expansively this labor day.  Lots of people are celebrating the "8 hours" campaign of the nineteenth century and using it to think not only about the problems of unionized labor today (especially in service industries!) but also work-life balance in the age of smart-phones. (Are we ever truly 'off the clock' when we are attached to our work emails 24/7?)
Picture
But I wanted to raise a couple of other contemporary issues to think about this Labor Day. Some of these are rooted in the problematic history of the labor movement itself that we celebrate today; unions often served to protect hierarchies of race, class, and gender in history, even as they claimed to be committed to undermining these inequities. (While my linked examples are from World War II, the history of the American Federation of Labor encapsulates this story well on a longer historical timeline.) Service labor falls clearly within the legacy of labor that is classed, raced, and gendered in ways that have made it often  fall outside the protected interests of nineteenth and twentieth century labor movement. Here are some topics to chew on.
Picture
  • Undocumented Immigrant Labor. While we should absolutely continue fights to raise the minimum wage to reach above poverty-levels, let us not forget to fight for the %5 of the nation's workforce who are undocumented and cannot expect even minimum wage, basic safety and other workplace rights, and may not feel they can safely file grievances or advocate for themselves. Our economy depends on these workers, most of all in our food systems; their below-poverty wages or even slavery subsidizes the cheap foods that some Americans still cannot afford.
​
  • Child Labor. Nope, not a thing of the past even here in the U.S., as the Human Rights Watch is documenting. Written into the very Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 -- and uncorrected since then -- is a MAJOR loophole. Functionally, the Act only sets strict limits on the "non-agricultural" labor of children and provides no oversight mechanisms for youth labor on farms. Check out this particularly heart-breaking example from World War II:

Picture
Picture
  • Environmental risks to labor -- in agriculture and elsewhere. The data is adding up, although people (and the environment!) have been experiencing the deleterious effects of industrial, chemical-intensive agriculture for years. We need to not only be worried about the pesticides in the food we *eat,* but also about the workers who are exposed to those pesticides much more directly in the fields, day in and day out. Let's move beyond the consumer-centric-mindset when we think about reforming our food systems and we may just wind up with agriculture that is good for everyone: producers, workers, consumers, and the planet.


This image captures the intersection of these three themes perfectly; I snapped a pic of this photo while doing research at the National Agricultural Library, so forgive the quality. The back is captioned: "Asst. Home demonstration agent giving insect control to 4-H club members composed of Mexican girls, Wharton County, Texas. (1939). Too often, well-intentioned efforts to 'uplift' and 'improve' the lives of labor have been coming from the top-down, with all the blind spots and flaws that includes, whether in the USDA or in a union. 

In short, just because agricultural jobs are shrinking in number doesn't mean that agricultural labor doesn't matter. Whenever you eat food, you are implicated in these broken systems. Because the problems are so endemic, I don't think it will be as clear-cut as a boycott of a single company or product; although these can be effective stages of a larger resistance, as demonstrated by Cesar Chavez with his Grapes of Wrath boycott. 

​Let's think beyond the consumer-centric mindset to also include workers and producers when we try to reform our foodways. If we include those who grow and harvest our food in our calculus of what makes for a sustainable food systems -- and equitable labor systems -- then we just might end up with a society that is better for everyone, and for the environment too. Next labor day, I want to see more complex representations of labor than my google image search from this morning. Let's get to work.
Picture

​BONUS: EMOTIONAL LABOR

Emotional Labor is something we should all be working to recognize as such -- real, actual work. The burden of this labor falls disproportionately on women, both in the workplace and outside it. If you haven't clicked through to any of my helpful links yet, you can just look to this photo from the archives for a succinct definition of what emotional labor is (and why it is such a problem when we don't compensate it accordingly):
Picture

    Author

    Anastasia Day
    History-Phd-in-Progress. Writes about environment, food, people and how the past informs the present.   

    Tweets by @Anastasia_C_Day

    Archives

    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    September 2019
    July 2019
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016

    Categories

    All
    Academia
    Archives
    Book Reviews
    Current Events
    Environmental History
    Everything Has A History
    Food Studies
    Pedagogy
    Victory Gardens

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly