Eggy goodness and a talked-out trillwing

So I gave The Egg Talk today at a food studies conference on campus. The conference was better attended and far more interesting than I expected it to be, and the egg craziness was received extremely well. Lots of laughs during the talk, which is always nice, but then lots of good comments and thought-provoking questions afterward, too. Fantastic Adviser asked me if post-diss I was going to write the scrapbooking book or the egg book first.

"Egg book? There will be no 'egg book,'" I said emphatically. "Maybe I'll write an article for Bitch or something like that, but no book."

"Oh come on, you have to write up the egg thing," she said. "Didn't you notice? It was all eggs, all the time today."


So. . . Let me see how my CV's publications section will look, say, five years down the road, if all goes well:

- Article on women scientists and bureaucracies (currently in revise & resubmit status) published in pretty good history journal.

- Article arguing that "American chicken eggs, as controlled and packaged in the supermarket, are at once a site of reassurance and anxiety for Americans concerned about declining fertility" published in some food studies journal of which I have not yet heard.

- Book published on women scientists in natural history institutions. (Readership: 5 people, all of them women scientists in natural history institutions.)

- Book under contract on cultish women crafters and collectors, including chapters on model horse collectors and scrapbook enthusiasts.

Intellectual schizophrenia, anyone? Would someone in an American Studies department please, please hire me? 'Cause I just don't fit anywhere else. And I'm really kind of enjoying the wackiness.


Tomorrow's talk, when I visit an American Studies class on nature and culture: (1) early 20th-century American women museum scientists' involvement with amateur science clubs AND (2) Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and transnational scientific discourse. Not sure how I'm going to bring those two together, but that's what the professor requested I speak about: women scientists and outreach, then women primatologists and colonialism.

Friday's talk, in Monterey (Yay for Monterey! Boo for a nasty Friday morning drive there!): "Democratizing American Science? Women Scientists' Outreach to Amateur Clubs, 1880-1930." The abstract, if you care:

In the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, women’s clubs expanded beyond their common concerns with literature and social service to embrace scientific learning. This paper considers the participation of professional women scientists—all of them affiliated with museums—in a selection of these clubs and associations. In contrast to their museums’ established channels of learning—exhibits and collections—the women’s styles of participation in this arena tended to embody a“bottom-up,” grassroots approach that drew on Progressive educational reforms. The paper argues that these scientists’ affiliation with these clubs proved more significant to the dissemination of scientific knowledge to amateurs than did their respected careers within some of the nation’s top natural history museums.