I have to finish it for her

I just realized that I'm sitting here, researching my dissertation in the same library where my grandmother worked as a janitor for twenty years.

So humbled. 

"Still I rise."

a better son/daughter

This song does a really good job of outlining how I've been feeling lately. I'm working on it. Be back soon.

a brief re-cap of the last month

I haven't posted in a while.

That's because in the last month, I have:

• moved back into my grandma's house from my parents'
• turned thirty
• received a visit from the Hubs
• finally won a callback for a job interview
• been called and interviewed for then offered another job the day before that interview
• accepted the job and started the next day as Kramer Middle School's new seventh grade social studies teacher
• given up on my PhD(?)
• struggled with my husband's decision not to evacuate for Hurricane Isaac
• watched a relative take most of the furniture from my grandmother's living room, where I grew up
• staged a counter-attack my body's fight against its new sleep and work schedule
• been signed in to the DAR
• fought with my husband incessantly about him returning to D.C.
• received a salary offer that's $10,000 too low
• ignored a thirteen year old's question "Why are you dressed like a fucking whore?"
• pre-qualified for a mortgage loan
• realized that my hair is falling out - literally in handfuls

So I've been busy. I promise to do a better job of writing, and going places/doing things to write about. Because I can't be captive to the classroom. Or my soulless, empty living room. Or my husband's phone calls.

I can't be.

my dissertation 101

I'm a doctoral student in the history department at Tulane University in New Orleans. I'm back home in D.C., though, because I've finished all of my coursework, my comprehensive exams, my language proficiency exam (in Spanish, if you're curious), and my dissertation prospectus. This means that I'm in the never-never-land known as ABD: all but dissertation.

It's kind of cruel for people to say, "You're so close! Just one step left!" Because the final step is researching and writing a book. But I digress.

The reason I'm able to come back home and live in D.C. is because my dissertation is about D.C. (and because I get paid to do research). So just like my classmate who writes about the Spanish Inquisition gets to go to Spain for a year, I get to come home for a year, to dig around in the archives to find the documents I'll need, that are mostly here (Howard, GW, MLK, LOC and NARA, I'm looking at you). Except instead of moving home at the end of the year, I'll already be here. Hooray! I never have to leave the city again!

So what exactly is my dissertation about? Well, right now, it's about the relationship between national civil rights organizations and our local movement for home rule (self-government and national representation). What does the civil rights movement look like if we tell the story from Washington instead of Birmingham? Does the time frame we tend to place on it change? Do the tactics? Do the major players? Did Washington's major demographic changes between 1945 and 1973 contribute to the success of the home rule movement? And by looking at the civil rights/home rule movement here, what can we learn about African-Americans' unique relationship to the federal government at a national level?

You can follow my research more closely at Free D.C., a Tumblr devoted to cataloging my dissertation process online. But if you're not, just be glad you got the newest version of my dissertation elevator speech: I've finally got it narrowed down to a cool 45 seconds, so no more boring people to sleep.

MHP + HRC = hooray!

Melissa Harris-Perry is one of the three professors on my dissertation committee. I had the privilege of working as her teaching assistant at Tulane this spring, and also worked as the volunteer coordinator on her husband's mayoral campaign. She is kind, generous, and brilliantly smart and funny. Melissa has never hidden her support for marriage equality, but it's fantastic to see her express her support this publicly.