academia

So, I thought the point of making the investment to get more education was to not rely on government assistance. I want to be careful about my tone, since I was a welfare recipient as a child. I don't think we should stigmatize men or women who need assistance, but this is a frightening precedent for institutions to set for women and families.

As 2010 draws to a close, it’s the time of year that nonprofits ask for donations. Bitch Media is no different; we need ongoing financial support. Usually, we would ask you to make a gift after telling you why you should support us. However, Bitch Media is lucky. We don’t need to tell you why Bitch is important because we can let our supporters tell their own stories. This week, Allison Sneider, a member of the Bitch Media Board of Directors and author of Suffragists in an Imperial Age: US Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870-1929 explains why she ♥s Bitch.

The first time I came across Bitch, I was looking through magazines in the supermarket. I flipped through it and thought, "This is coming home with me!" As an academic teaching women’s history, I am involved in many conversations about feminism. But outside the academy, these conversations seem to disappear. I love that Bitch Media, through the magazine, library, blogs, podcasts, forums and more, brings this conversation outside the walls of academia and to a diverse and growing community. Bitch is a conversation worth having.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire wrote, "Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the state of their struggle for liberation...Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education." Because I believe dialogue is a critical component in working toward radical social change, I have quite a bit of love for conducting interviews--and thus, do so with some frequency.

Last week, my interview with Lorraine M. López, the editor of the newly published collection An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor and Working-Class Roots, was published in WireTap Magazine. Since my conversation with López was more lengthy than the allotted space would allow, I was given permission to post a complimentary piece here. The two posts are intended to be read in tandem in order to experience the full scope of our conversation.