Saturday, February 11, 2012

Frances Kellor Conversations

Saturday, February 18th, at 7 pm, at Manhattan's Bluestockings Book Store I will be having a book launch for Founding Mother: Frances Kellor and the Quest for Progressive Democracy.  Mostly in my presentation, I hope to have questions as Kellor's ability to raise them is what makes her so fascinating.

Right now I am at The Affect Factory Conference which looks at the intersection of gender, affect, and labor.  Right now is a performance and I am a word guy.  But Kellor was transgender and wrote on labor issues, so I am at the conference seeking questions. 

In a presentation on exuberance in Latin American labor movements, I got to wonder about Kellor.

What place did her "play spirit" in her basketball work play in her depiction of the "creative" input of workers?  

At the beginning of March, I will be speaking at a trans*studies conference in California.  I wrote of Kellor within the discussions around Intellectual History.  I need transgender scholars to answer another question I had today. 

In an informal conversation here someone asked me if Kellor was misogynistic and, if transgendered, properly a lesbian (being then perhaps a man who loved women).  

Great!  Sex change operations did not happen popularly in America until the 1940s.  And I do not think she would not have had the language to call herself a man.  But since childhood she identified with masculine traits. I hope to learn more about where she fits in modern trans discourse in California.  

Kellor's masculinity made her disrespectful of stereotypical women's passivity and gossipy concern with "women's virtue."  She cared about social justice writ large and wanted all to engage in activism.  But her piece  [sex] Cloisters in American Politics makes clear that she admired women's sensibilities and she lived only in women's communities.  Questions of consistency and meaning call for study and interpretation.

Frances Kellor fascinates me because of the number of ways in which we can ask questions about her.
Please join at one of these events and generate some questions!

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