Collie's Bestiary

It is fascinating to note the very same women who courageously and tirelessly worked side by side with men to bring their nation into existence are the ones who are now being, in a very real sense, colonized by the system now in power. In this particular case a fundamentalist perspective seems to be conflated [...]

One can also see how little effort it takes within the holy texts to generalize these recurrent motifs, and define as sacred the hypostatised cultural norm: 'Man.' This religious symbol of Man allows the male-defined community to create and worship itself, and justifies a collective effervescence that seems to always exclude women. Women may contribute [...]

Fundamentalism Why is there a growing fundamentalist movement in a wide variety of disparate cultures today? Why are women almost invariably the mediums on which this fundamentalism is expressed? It is not surprising to discover a reductionist and/or essentialist attitude towards women within cultures and societies wherein fundamentalist beliefs are gaining hold. In many, if [...]

Originally written in… late 1999, I think? -for an anthropology class of the same name. This is an experiment to see how well (or not) old college papers transfer to this format. Enjoy! ;) Links to associated book reviews I've written, and Amazon associate links, are in the Bibliography at the end of the paper. [...]

Spent most of yesterday in a state of carefully controlled panic. I've been desperately working on finishing my late papers for last quarter — thank goodness for being able to "pre-load" WP with my reviews and Bestiaries! So I have a desktop with Word 2007, the latest version, on it… and a nice but very [...]

Unreliable Truth: On Memoir & Memory by Maureen Murdock I find myself wondering, as I read, what was Murdock's solution to her loss of faith within the Roman Catholic Church — is it applicable to my situation as well? I am faintly amused at the thought: clearly her efforts to appeal to a universal human [...]

Unreliable Truth: On Memoir & Memory by Maureen Murdock Murdock muses that she writes in an effort to disentangle her voice from the grip of her mother's anger. I wonder as I read: would that be how her mother saw the relationship? My reflections are an effort to disentangle myself from the grip of the [...]

Unreliable Truth: On Memoir & Memory by Maureen Murdock I believe there are as many different truths as there are people to hold them, and likely even more than that, considering how we all grow and change over the years. Mine is in the process of being re-crafted, in fact — the master's program in [...]

Unreliable Truth: On Memoir & Memory by Maureen Murdock Fact can exist without human intelligence but truth cannot. – Toni Morrison

There was also a curious song with four female singers titled "Sending You A Little Christmas." I say curious because it was about being far away from the one(s) you love… and it had some war footage playing on the big screens behind the singers! I think it's nice to remember our armed forces out [...]