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Hosts/Saints/Witches: Women and Food under Catholicism in Love Medicine
Full text linkIn her novel Love Medicine, among her other works, Louise Erdrich displays an overt interest in American religions. She especially probes the tensions between Christianity, imported by European colonizers, and indigenous spiritual traditions. Gender is another prominent concern of Erdrich\u27s writing; here also, she juxtaposes native and settler concepts of gender, underscoring indigenous women\u27s struggles in the twentieth century. Both of these topics have already been explored, though often separately. Erdrich curiously places food imagery, sometimes unassuming and sometimes bizarre, at the intersections of religion and gender throughout the novel. Erdrich draws on Catholic traditions solidified in medieval Europe as she identifies women with food and with God in the symbols of bread and milk. While the character of Marie Lazarre represents indigenous women\u27s grim Catholic destiny to be reconstituted and consumed, Lulu Nanapush serves herself with a native magic that inverts male characters\u27 attempts to subdue and exploit her and her family. As Erdrich investigates the relationships between consumer/consumed and empowered/disempowered, she reveals these messy categories\u27 potential to defy received belief
Inhabiting Sore Butt Cracks : Queering the U.S. Long-Term Care System
Full text linkIn the face of a failing long-term care system, the author positions a queer theoretical lens as a potential source of creativity and empathy to help us build a care system that supports the dignity and personhood of all patients. The comedic work of a long-term care patient, Youtuber Clay-The-Comedian, is analyzed through a queer-theories lens as a new approach to long-term care that celebrates the personhood of all types of bodies, while also never diminishing the often difficult reality that folks in need of care face. This queer rhetoric engages with the messy, embodied experiences of patients to develop a remedy to our broken system, wherein the inevitable period of disability between old age and death is recognized as still valuable. When we inhabit difficult spaces with one another, we may discover exciting, non-normative forms of fulfillment
Household Charitable Giving among U.S. Working-Class Families, 1918-1919
Full text linkThis paper examines household charitable giving in the period just before the New Deal increased government involvement in social services. The 1918-19 BLS Cost of Living Survey provides a window on middle-class giving to church, charity, and patriotic organizations, as well as investment in Liberty Bonds. A lognormal hurdle model is used to estimate the probability of any giving, and the amount given, to different types of organizations. From this, we estimate income elasticities of giving and the substitutability of giving to different types of organizations. The results are compared to findings from studies on modern giving. I find that giving to similar types of organizations was complementary in this time period. Church giving was particularly income inelastic. In contrast with today, families living in the northeast were most likely to give to churches. I consider a few explanations for this result
