About

Welcome!

We are all interested in Love, are we not?

A little about me:
I recently graduated with a PhD in American History from Purdue University. My graduate work centered on the ways that cultural paradigms infiltrate the most intimate spaces, and how love relationships of all sorts are thus affected. I wrote my dissertation about women of great talent, intellect, and ambition who were either married to or in a relationship with a man whose fame eclipsed her own. These women’s stories resonate profoundly even today. How is one able to locate the “self” in any given cultural moment rife with its own pressures to conform?  Their stories of “self-realization” and of Love in the broadest sense moved me greatly.  Time-wise my dissertation focused mainly on the post-war period in America, where gender roles and expectations were anxiously managed, but my curiosity spans across epochs and civilizations.

Here and in my future study, I want to continue to approach the question of Love from an historical perspective, to tell enlightening stories from the past, but I also intend to engage philosophy, mythology, religion, poetry, literature, and music. This blog is NOT limited to questions of romantic love by any stretch.  I want to engage with Love as a robust civic capacity, as the tentacles with which we reach toward each other. I want to attempt to unearth what has been possible and then ultimately what is possible when we swim in the waters of this most interesting word:  Love.

Outside of my scholarly activity, I’m a mother to two lovely daughters and engaged to a rock ‘n’ roll guitar player. We all live in Indiana where nature is the great redeemer. I also play and sing in a band. I love hot tea, Tupac, teaching, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  No doubt all of these topics will appear as well.