Society and the Profession, 1958–83

1991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lauter
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Graduate School ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Freedom Schools ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
School Director ◽  
The Impact

When I was asked to write about the impact of society on our profession over the last twenty-five years, it occurred to me that the period also measures my own lifetime as a professional. I took up full-time teaching in 1957, the year before I received my doctorate. I gave my first paper at a Modern Language Association convention around that time, participated in producing two sons, and published my first article. I left one job, joined in antinuke, anti-ROTC, and prounion activities, and got fired from the second job. I remember complaining to my graduate school director, en route to a third job, how painfully remote upstate New York seemed from everything I valued. Said he, flatly, “You can publish your way out of any place.” Perhaps that was so, then; certainly I acted on that instruction. But I never really put it to the test, for somehow my career swerved that splinter and never returned quite to the groove. In 1963 I went to work for the Quakers, promoting peace studies and learning about political economy. Then, in 1964, I traveled to Mississippi to teach in Freedom Schools and discovered the profound limitations of my graduate school education. With deliberation, among a group of my students from Smith, I went off to jail in Montgomery. Later, as the peace movement brought the war home, I was provided with a more impromptu visit to the Baltimore pokey after trying to protect a Vietnam vet from an outraged policeman. For a number of years I sported a little red button that said “A free university in a free society”—an idea on the basis of which I tried to conduct my life. In due course, I became an active feminist, involved in efforts, like The Feminist Press, to change education and thus society. That pattern of life was not, of course, precisely typical of members of our profession— though more people than we now acknowledge participated in it one way or another. I speak of my life because it reflected, in a sense became a vehicle of, the forces for social change I am to write about here.

Society and the Profession, 1958–83

PMLA ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 99 (3) ◽  
pp. 414-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lauter
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Robert Frost ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
School Director ◽  
Muriel Rukeyser ◽  
New Race ◽  
The Impact

The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing. Robert Frost, “The Oven Bird” When your women are ready and rich in their wish for the world destroy the leaden heart, we've a new race to start. Muriel Rukeyser, “More of a Corpse Than a Woman”When I was asked to write about the impact of society on our profession over the last twenty-five years, it occurred to me that the period also measures my own lifetime as a professional. I took up full-time teaching in 1957, the year before I received my doctorate. I gave my first paper at a Modern Language Association convention around that time, participated in producing two sons, and published my first article. I left one job, joined in antinuke, anti-ROTC, and prounion activities, and got fired from the second job. I remember complaining to my graduate school director, en route to a third job, how painfully remote upstate New York seemed from everything I valued. Said he, flatly, “You can publish your way out of any place.” Perhaps that was so, then; certainly I acted on that instruction. But I never really put it to the test, for somehow my career swerved that splinter and never returned quite to the groove.

Women Writing in English

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betty Travitsky
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
Women Authors ◽  
Low Literacy ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
British America ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Early Modern Women ◽  
Interdisciplinary Journal

However much of a Renaissance early modern Englishwomen writers may, or may not, have experienced—a question raised in 1977 by Joan Kelly (“Did Women Have a Renaissance?” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977], 137–164) and revisited in 2013 in a forum in Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal (8); see Trends in Modern Interpretation—their writing practices seem not to have been immediately affected by the coming of the book. Of over thirty-three thousand entries in A Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, compiled by A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–1991), eighty-five have been assigned to women authors, or approximately 0.5 percent, and these titles appeared predominantly between 1545 and 1640. The dramatic increase in printed writings by women from 1641 to 1700 constitutes approximately 1.2 percent of the titles in print from a period in which fewer than seven hundred titles have been assigned to women of the over 120,000 recorded titles in Donald Goddard Wing’s Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641–1700 (New York: Modern Language Association, 1972–1988). These small numbers of works can be explained, in part, by relatively low literacy rates among women compared to men and by the disapproval of women’s expressing their thoughts in public(ation). With the fairly recent growth of research into manuscript writings by women, it seems indisputable that most early modern Englishwomen writers raised their voices in manuscript rather than in print and in what we now term private, noncanonical forms like letters and diaries. It also seems that most of those women who wrote poems or dramas or prose of traditional types circulated their writings in familial and social manuscript networks (a proportion suggested by recovered materials); scholars are turning increased attention to these manuscript writers and writings.

The Impact of Counsel at First Appearance on Pretrial Release in Felony Arraignments: The Case of Rural Jurisdictions

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 833-856
Author(s):  
Alissa Pollitz Worden ◽  
Reveka V. Shteynberg ◽  
Kirstin A. Morgan ◽  
Andrew L. B. Davies
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Pretrial Release ◽  
Court Reform ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
Rural Counties ◽  
Mixed Support ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Expected Outcomes

This article examines the impact of early provision of counsel on judges’ pretrial release and bail decisions in two rural counties in upstate New York, in cases involving felony charges. This study builds upon previously reported research on misdemeanor cases. We note that although the stakes are higher in felony cases, few studies have investigated the dynamics of first appearance decisions at either level. We investigate the hypotheses that when defendants are represented by attorneys at their first appearances in court, (a) judges are more inclined to release on recognizance or under supervision, (b) judges impose less restrictive bail amounts, and (c) as a consequence, defendants spend less time detained prior to disposition. We find mixed support for these hypotheses, although some evidence that counsel at first appearance (CAFA) produces the expected outcomes. We conclude that the implementation of programs intended to ensure CAFA may be tempered by courthouse cultures, and that future research on court reform should include the study of rural jurisdictions.

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