My Mom is helping to organize her college reunion and to that end, has been researching in the college archives. The college archives are run by a prof. at the college who, since it's a Catholic women's college, is a PhD and a nun. Mom has become buddies with the archivist/professor/nun and apparently was chatting away, presumably about her kid who is in a history Phd program, one day when the nun* asked what my Phd diss is on.
An e-mail and phone exchange ensued.
Mom: The professor asked some questions and I couldn't respond. What is your dissertation about?
YSA thinking: This is weird. I've been working on the same topic for years...couldn't she at least give a ballpark answer from memory...like, something about Germany (doesn't she remember when I lived in Germany?) And my dissertation even has nuns in it!
YSA: Mom, but you know what my dissertation is about? Remember? Remember the naked dancing nun? And the sex workers and venereal disease legislation!
Mom: Well, can you write that up so that I can send it to the professor?
YSA: Huh? Like a nun-friendly version of my diss?
Mom: Just write something I can send to her.
I wrote a paragraph and sent it to Mom, who sent it to the nun (nuns have e-mail, too). I never heard back from the nun. But all this seemed a little strange. Didn't Mom know what my dissertation was about?
*Mom points out that she's a nun, yes, but also a history professor. But it's hard for me not to think of her as The Nun.
4 comments:
I am sure your mom knows generally what your diss is about, but I'm thinking she didn't feel like she could do it justice. As though there's a secret language only historians speak and mere mortals can only imitate the sounds.
Though it's too bad The Nun you didn't get a reaction out of The Nun.
No one knows what we do. It's so sad. We can explain it over and over again to people, but they still never know. I've settled for being happy if they can name the country I study. Bonus points if they can recall the century.
God we lead sad lives.
Word. CBAM is right, they have no clue. My family knows I study Black people but I'm pretty sure that this is because some of them are Black people. My father sends me random history facts sometimes and he used to buy me whatever book he saw that said history on the cover...at least now he's only buying books that have pictures of Black people that say history on the cover. Sigh...
Hmm, well, I think it's more than that no one can fathom what anyone's diss is about. Stand by for more.
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