Hello Summer!

My sophomore year is OVER! Can you believe it? I'm halfway done with college!

This semester I studied a lot of interesting things, and I feel like you all might be interested, so here's a summary!

In my Intro to American Studies class, we talked about what it means to be an American. (Hint: It's often about race.) Our final project was a paper researching an American city through a primary source, so I looked at how a mommy blog called Nat the Fat Rat portrays motherhood in New York, mostly based on the work of the fabulous Susan Douglas.

In Native American Religions, we talked about Native American spiritualities from around the country and how they've changed since contact with Euro-Americans. (Hint: This class was almost mostly about race.) I got to babble about cultural appropriation, which is always exciting! (ie here and here.)

In Psych of Men, we talked about cultural constructs of gender and how they affect men's psychology. Alas, I have no links for you, but it was good stuff.

In Religion and Sexuality in Western Religious Tradition, we talked about women in Christianity through history (or, more often, what men said about women in Christianity). My very favorite was Jerome, who said that the only point of sex is to produce more virgins. When asked about, you know, carrying on the human species and all that, he said, "There will always be prostitutes." My final paper was a story, based on The Christmas Eve Dialogue by Schleiermacher, which examined a couple of different approaches to feminist Christology. (That stuff made my head hurt, but it was well worth the effort!)

And then I took a Spanish class and learned how to talk about gender and sexuality in Spanish. Whoo!

This summer, I'll be working with the Digital Media team over at Human Rights Campaign, helping out Standing on the Side of Love at General Assembly, and attending my first ever Netroots Nation conference! Yay!