My first post

So most of my friends seem to have started a blog, and since I'm technologically inept, I thought I'd embrace technology for a change and give this thing a try. My primary reason for starting this is a recurring need to journal. While the public nature of a blog does bother me a bit, I also think it will be easier to journal at my computer.

The title of my blog comes straight out my dissertation research. Much of the scholarship on 19th-century American women's writing deals with the notion of separate spheres--public for men, private for women. The scholarship of the past 20 years or so has been focused on the idea that these spheres aren't as separate as scholars once thought. In my dissertation, I am focusing specifically on the separation of spaces, architectural and otherwise, arguing that women often manipulated spaces in order to traverse the divide between public and private spheres. As an expectant mother, I'm interested in the divide of public and private in my own life. I anticipate that I won't be able to keep the "spheres" separate, and I don't know that I want to keep them separate.

So we'll see where this blog goes, where my research goes, and where my life goes.