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Out with D and Aki ♥ today I spotted... Gay Coffeehouse Skinhead Lecturer! IN A COFFEEHOUSESHOP! (Hey baby! How's the transgender research coming? I'll be slashing you with your coworker soon!) Fairly sure he didn't recognise me at all, though, as he was facing away and I looked very different three years ago. How exciting! In his natural habitat!
DILEMMA.
Hypothetically, if I ever wanted to publish an original gay romance novel, it wouldn't be wise to set it in the town where I live. Finland isn't very big, and setting anything here - even if it wasn't in town here; there just aren't that many universities and it would certainly be recognisable, maybe even to people who haven't even been there - is as good as giving the characters the names of the real people who inspired them.
So, you know, there are universities everywhere, right? Just set it in Anycollegetown USA at Anonymous University? EXCEPT that my experiences of universities in the US are confined to on the one hand, a small and exclusive liberal arts college, entirely in the language and literature departments (Amherst), and on the other, a not-so-great state university... mostly in the science departments (Alabama, ranked 150-somethingth).
But the only single thing I've spent any length of time studying is sociology, and my experience seems to indicate that the discipline is treated differently in North America. Certainly Alabama doesn't even have a department, and Amherst lumped it in under anthropology (which... well... *insert debate*). For that matter, my idea of how a large North American research university handles higher degrees in the social sciences is... practically non-existent, because I'm 100% certain it's really not like it is here, where the department has only one full professor and like, six lecturers and six doctoral candidates, or something like that, and the entire institute is held in a house (rather, an ex-residence) the size of the house I grew up in (no seriously - no, seriously).
So if I want to set it at Anonymous University, I'd probably have to change the department that my characters work in, and then I wouldn't know enough about the academic side of their subject. I could just recruit a full-time North American informant with experience of some university subject or other, of course. Volunteers to the left. And if I want to set it at a New England liberal arts college, I'd have to change the department, too. I could probably manage something, though. I have a bit of knowledge of the academic side of anthropology and folkloristics, I suppose. It would be fun to write about someone writing their thesis on, like, the black metal scene (someone's doing that in folkloristics at Åbo Akademi, or they were a few years ago).
Hypothetically, if I ever wanted to publish an original gay romance novel, it wouldn't be wise to set it in the town where I live. Finland isn't very big, and setting anything here - even if it wasn't in town here; there just aren't that many universities and it would certainly be recognisable, maybe even to people who haven't even been there - is as good as giving the characters the names of the real people who inspired them.
So, you know, there are universities everywhere, right? Just set it in Anycollegetown USA at Anonymous University? EXCEPT that my experiences of universities in the US are confined to on the one hand, a small and exclusive liberal arts college, entirely in the language and literature departments (Amherst), and on the other, a not-so-great state university... mostly in the science departments (Alabama, ranked 150-somethingth).
But the only single thing I've spent any length of time studying is sociology, and my experience seems to indicate that the discipline is treated differently in North America. Certainly Alabama doesn't even have a department, and Amherst lumped it in under anthropology (which... well... *insert debate*). For that matter, my idea of how a large North American research university handles higher degrees in the social sciences is... practically non-existent, because I'm 100% certain it's really not like it is here, where the department has only one full professor and like, six lecturers and six doctoral candidates, or something like that, and the entire institute is held in a house (rather, an ex-residence) the size of the house I grew up in (no seriously - no, seriously).
So if I want to set it at Anonymous University, I'd probably have to change the department that my characters work in, and then I wouldn't know enough about the academic side of their subject. I could just recruit a full-time North American informant with experience of some university subject or other, of course. Volunteers to the left. And if I want to set it at a New England liberal arts college, I'd have to change the department, too. I could probably manage something, though. I have a bit of knowledge of the academic side of anthropology and folkloristics, I suppose. It would be fun to write about someone writing their thesis on, like, the black metal scene (someone's doing that in folkloristics at Åbo Akademi, or they were a few years ago).
this is not an update
3 Oct 2006 10:52 ami don't really have time to write about sugar's slash presentation, m&m's & chinese, or gcsl1 reportedly dancing on the table in gold lamé[flocked] at the queer studies conference (and i wasn't theeere!) yet. in fact i didn't have time for the several pages of porn i wrote last night either because i need to prepare for a presentation in spanish on thursday and i don't have any of the appropriate vocabulary as yet. (last night's porn was fun but it also almost caused me to get quite muddy this morning, as porn-preoccupation made me space on the fact that a poodle was approaching perry on a very narrow sidewalk and suddenly both dogs lunged as one. i had to make a quick detour across the street.)
neither do i have time to post about the 70s swedish tv version of emil i lönneberga or my fun times babysitting wax's niece yesterday, or my brother-outlaw's plans to build a movie theatre in the library/guest room in his house, and how his geekouts are awesome, and he and i now have the same hairstyle, and why is it that little kids always pretend to be dogs?, and carmela's favourite toy at our house is a long string of giant grey pearl mardi gras beads.
so in lieu of a real entry, you can have some ohmiya from the shy granny mago.
1. gay coffeehouse skinhead lecturer, for those of you not following along at home
neither do i have time to post about the 70s swedish tv version of emil i lönneberga or my fun times babysitting wax's niece yesterday, or my brother-outlaw's plans to build a movie theatre in the library/guest room in his house, and how his geekouts are awesome, and he and i now have the same hairstyle, and why is it that little kids always pretend to be dogs?, and carmela's favourite toy at our house is a long string of giant grey pearl mardi gras beads.
so in lieu of a real entry, you can have some ohmiya from the shy granny mago.
1. gay coffeehouse skinhead lecturer, for those of you not following along at home
well... now i feel sheepish.
10 Dec 2005 12:12 pmthere was a sociology department party last night which i skipped--the second one they've had since i enrolled to the subject that i haven't gone to. and i kind of want to but on the other hand... i hate parties where i don't know almost everyone present, i hate people in general, i especially hate groups of people, and i don't really like going out. so i was torn already, and the fact they were having it on my birthday (and that it was bring your own alcohol and there was some expectation of dollar-store-type presents for joke-gift exchange and... i don't know where the finnish dollar store is and... ugh!) decided me to indulge myself, since it was my birthday, by just doing what i wanted angst-free.
only now i open my email (for the first time in three days--my official school email, shut up!, nobody ever uses it for anything) and there's this whole personal email from sldl, who charitably assumes that i don't know about the party because i'm new here, and personally encourages me to go even though the enrollment date had passed, because, he says, it's important for creating your "sociological identity" and part of school life and blah blah. and then says he hopes my classes and everything are going fine too and offers to discuss it later. um. so. at least the party is past so i don't have to go, and now i just have to feel guilty.
ps--hey![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
perhael, ♥! tim! (i totally saved your present and didn't open it till my actual birthday last night.)
pps--i have switched my journal's wallpaper for another antique wallpaper and the colours accordingly. this one is just until i exchange it for something more blue and channukahey probably.
only now i open my email (for the first time in three days--my official school email, shut up!, nobody ever uses it for anything) and there's this whole personal email from sldl, who charitably assumes that i don't know about the party because i'm new here, and personally encourages me to go even though the enrollment date had passed, because, he says, it's important for creating your "sociological identity" and part of school life and blah blah. and then says he hopes my classes and everything are going fine too and offers to discuss it later. um. so. at least the party is past so i don't have to go, and now i just have to feel guilty.
ps--hey
perhael, ♥! tim! (i totally saved your present and didn't open it till my actual birthday last night.)pps--i have switched my journal's wallpaper for another antique wallpaper and the colours accordingly. this one is just until i exchange it for something more blue and channukahey probably.
today there was an optional lecture on how to write academic essays, which i went to in the interest of a) seeing what sldl will be looking for and b) finding out if there were some things swedish-speaking people do completely differently (there are: citations. their method is to only kind of have any sort of method at all. "you can use parentheses around the year, or without the parentheses and use a period instead, and you can write the name out or abbreviate it, and sometimes it says 'editor' after the name of the editor..."). (but that's another post.)
so in my notes i've written:
--which, in fact, i'm pretty sure he did say. um.
[Poll #604268]
so in my notes i've written:
did he just say you should find your own sources because the bibliography looks prettier if there's more than one book on it?
--which, in fact, i'm pretty sure he did say. um.
[Poll #604268]
today's out-of-context quote
10 Oct 2005 02:11 amrandwise_gamgee: I'm just glad I have small nuts.but it's not THAT far out of context. i mean... i don't want you to think we aren't being dirty! we so are.
unambiguously gay
7 Apr 2005 05:21 pmgay coffeehouse skinhead lecturer gave a lecture today on the relationship between gender equality and progressive attitudes on sexuality.
me: you didn't really refer to the article on sexual satisfaction within relationships.
gcsl: no, i--what can i say? i had to give you some reading on the heterosexuals, but--they're boring.
so his name has dropped the "ambiguously" from before the "gay." i suppose he was never all that ambiguous, but one doesn't like to jump to conclusions.
me: you didn't really refer to the article on sexual satisfaction within relationships.
gcsl: no, i--what can i say? i had to give you some reading on the heterosexuals, but--they're boring.
so his name has dropped the "ambiguously" from before the "gay." i suppose he was never all that ambiguous, but one doesn't like to jump to conclusions.
