The Big Picture & a side of feminism

It's friday night, and my inability to decide what I'd like to do tonight has lead me to do, well, nothing. No no, I shouldn't say nothing, but I am staying in and reading up for my thesis.

I don't know if I've talked about this here before, but I need some perspective, so here it is: this post will be about my thesis (disgruntled readers, turn away now! this is bound to be uninteresting for nearly everybody!). For those curiously-minded, I am a graduate student in history--especially ancient roman history--specifically women/religion in the ancient roman empire. I'm nearly done with my MA program; I just need to finish up that pesky thing called the thesis. What, pray tell, am I writing this tome about? What is it that I spend days and nights dreaming, thinking, crying, praying, typing away at, scratching my head over? What is the topic that I've dedicated the last year and one-half to?

Well, it goes something like this (taken from a writing exercise from Kate Turabian's Manual of Style):
I am studying the topic of female priests/patrons in the first 3 centuries of the Roman empire, because I want to find out how women across the roman empire were obtaining public power/status in their communities through their works as both priestess and patroness, so that I can help others understand that women in ancient rome were not simply mothers and wives, that their influence was not merely in the domestic sphere, and that they could have power in their own right, as women equally able to change the face, customs, behaviours, way of life of their cities as any man--something that history in general seems to forget or overlook.

I will be the first to admit that I recognize that I, myself, am overwhelmed by what I'm arguing. I won't go into very much detail (because this post is already riveting as it is), but let me just say that it is a daunting task, and I am easily intimidated. Hence the laggy-ness on my part over the course of this summer to make any sort of real progress on my thesis.

However, when I come across a statement as such as this: By erecting large-scale structures, women effectively inserted a feminine voice, an alien prescence, into a predominantly masculine culture (Margaret L. Woodhull, "Matronly Patrons in the Early Roman Empire: The Case of Salvia Postuma" [I wish this thing had footnotes lol]), which, on the surface seems like a rather ordinary statement, but is really a comment on extraordinary behavior of women in a time that was so overtly masculine, and what a remarkable position these women were in to be able to stand right along side their male counterparts, and how important it is to recognize the efforts of these women, my heart bursts into a firey passion that screams out that THIS, this, is why I do what I do.

Women are so neglected, so marginalized, so downplayed in the history books, in the social studies books in schools. I think back to my own education, and how I didn't get an appreciation of a woman in history until I was in 7th grade, when I did a presentation of Eleanor of Aquitaine. I read the book, Of Scarlet and Miniver, a supplementary reading because I can't even remember if there was even a biographical slip of Eleanor in that social studies book, and through that book, forgiving all its romanticizing and character illusions, I found myself, for the first time, admiring an historical woman. And I mean, I really really admired her. But what, I was 12? 13? at the time? And I found that I did not have that feeling of admiration, of witnessing a woman's experience of history, for the rest of my middle/high school education. And how unfortunate is it that young girls are made to study the history through the eyes of men, and how they could potentially go through all that education without even once understanding her own self through that history, of not being able to see her own existence in the pages of that history because women are not taken seriously. And for all those haters who think that women do not have a place in their type of history because they didn't participate in wars, or politics, I just have to say that that means nothing because women were there too. Woman have always been there.

okay, enough of that. I didn't mean to rant on about feminist history haha.

On a completely different note, I got my office assignment and my office number for the semester <3 I was completely giddy, but it won't feel official until I get my KEYS. Oh, but, there are 9 TAs for the course, 7 boys and 2 girls, and get this, they paired off all the boys together, and put me with the girl, and all the boys are together at one end of the floor, and me and this girl are on the opposite end! Also, because the number of boys just far exceeds the number of girls in our department, I just happen to know all the other boys, and the girl that I'm sharing an office with is a complete stranger to me. Figures, right?