Rocky Mountain E-Review
of Language and Literature
Volume 52, Number 2
Fall 1998
CONTENTS
From the Editors
From the Editors
We at the RMMLA Secretariat are all still getting along, in many respects like civilized human beings. Even with Rachel. Nevertheless, for this issue, we each have individual, uh, issues.
One of the editors was seen recently sitting in her office, sipping something and looking wistfully at her bowling trophies. (Rachel.) Clearly she does not have enough to do. Michael therefore requests that more RMMLA members make a commitment to send in an article of theirs for consideration. He suspects that, for example, Salt Lake conference papers, after revision, might be sent to her. (It really is an outrage.)
Rachel herself is anxious that we see a few more articles for the coming thematic issue: The Use of Memory in Literature: (Auto)Biographical and Neo-Historical Approaches. She commands that you send these in immediately. (We suggest you do so. Please.) And if yesterday is too soon to generate such a piece, realize that we will soon be seeking articles for a later thematic issue: Anachronisms and Neologisms in Language and Literature: The Creation of New Wor(l)ds.
Ana María has gone into a mania for translation pieces. Since this seems healthier than her prior eccentricity regarding male exotic dancers, we support her in the hope that you will consider submitting English translations of short stories and essays, once you attain permission from the copyright owners of the original pieces.
Joan said something we didn't catch about Aplets, Cotlets, and the eMillennium. She's got that look in her eye that promises revolution. It may not be televised, but it will probably be downloadable. Keep an eye and a bookmark on the RMMLA web site (http://rmmla.innoved.org).
However well-oiled the machinery of the Rocky Mountain MLA, it has nevertheless ground a few of us into detritus, and so we have bid a fond "please forgive us" to Bryce Campbell, former Managing Editor, and Paula Sato, former Administrative Assistant, both of whom have opted for pastures greener and less allergenic than those of the inland northwest.
Happily for us, in this profession two more are born every minute. The hyperspondaical Elaine M. Clark Hall has taken over the Administrative Assistant and Web Manager responsibilities. Say hi, Elaine.
Working for RMMLA has lengthened my reading list to unmanageable proportions! On the positive side, it has piqued my interest in the exchanging of literary ideas. Thanks!
She's so nice. But here's what she really said to me:
Leave me alone. I just lost a stack of registrations.
The Managing Editor position was forfeited in a pool game to Doryjane Birrer, Ph.D. Candidate in Masochism. Say hi to the nice people, Doryjane.
This sure is a change from professional bellydancing!
(It is not, you crazy kid!) She's so zany! But she found that stack of registrations.
So, without much more than a few additional pages of further ado, adieu.
Michael Delahoyde
Rachel Halverson
Ana María Rodríguez-Vivaldi
Throughout the early twentieth century, psychologists, medical doctors, and sexologists debated and determined our modern understanding of the female homosexual. Rooted in a dialectic between the theories of Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis, the discourses of the lesbian emphasized the perversity and deviancy of the homosexual woman. Radclyffe Hall and Virginia Woolf engage this discussion and offer two powerful fictional portraits of women who challenge the developed notion of the lesbian as either a broken heterosexual or a mannish woman. The characters of Hall and Woolf, moreover, resist the heterosexualization of culture which mandates that individuals must be stable agents as either male or female, heterosexual or homosexual.
This piece relates one academic's personal experience of a commuting, dual-career marriage to sociological analysis presented in the recent book, Academic Couples: Problems and Promises. The book, summarized and reviewed here, covers the history and social context of academic women and couples in America, legal and institutional concerns about programs for hiring partners, and data on the career success and scholarly productivity of academic couples. The article's author finds that the studies in the book contextualize her own experience, but do not address the emotional and social issues she observes as a wide-spread phenomenon among commuting couples.
