Pamela VanHaitsma

My amazing office yesterday…during the one hour I could stand the heat #monarch #milkweed #BeeBalm #HummingbirdMoth #HappyValley #PollinatorGarden

Look who I met on my run earlier this morning? #RegalMoth 13+ weeks until the #TusseyMountainBack #HappyValley #running #TrailRunning #UltraMarathon

Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age: A Rhetorical Education (2019) has been released in paperback! Tanks to Aurora X. Bell @uscpress & Erin Rand & Mary Anne Taylor for the RSQ & RPA review quotes on the new back cover #TeamRhetoric #TeamFemRhet #rhetoric #LGBTQ #LGBTQHistory #archives

When mama trains for a 50k 🤣 16 weeks until the #TusseyMountainBack!
#HappyValley #running #TrailRunning #UltraMarathon

Look who I met during this week’s 15-miler! A yellow timber rattlesnake? I definitely rerouted. 17 weeks until the #TusseyMountainBack #HappyValley #running #TrailRunning

That is so lovely to hear, thank you for telling me!

Mountain Laurel and tadpoles during today’s 10-miler #HappyValley #running #TrailRunning

If you enjoyed celebrating the birthday of #RachelCarson this week, check out this just-published @stanfordpress.bsky.social book by @lidamaxwell.bsky.social

We continue to have so much to learn from Carson’s story!

#RachelCarson #QueerHistory #TeamRhetoric #LGBTQ #LGBTQHistory #environmentalism

"Perhaps VanHaitsma is right that her attempt to recover the romance between Primus and Brown is in some way self-gratifying. Yet is it not the truth that rhetoricians often engage in an affective process of criticism, attending to what feels significant to them? I know I do. What if this affective engagement is just what the erotic as rhetorical power demands of us? In VanHaitsma’s consoling of herself, she is enacting the erotic by imagining a different story. She desires a different ending for Primus and Brown. Perhaps her interludes are her application of the erotic as rhetorical power in her own work. She may find it self-gratifying, but her critical awareness of this process actually distinguishes her scholarship and opens up space for other scholars to deliberately study archival materials and marginalized modes of relationality. In all, VanHaitsma literally and figuratively speaks to rhetoricians’ affective engagements with criticism, opening up space for more exploration of the creative rhetorical power of the erotic."

O’Malley Perrin concludes Peitho review with these reflections on rhetorical criticism, affect & desire (3/3). If you read the book, I’d love to hear more on questions raised by its imaginative interludes.

#TeamRhetoric #TeamFemRhet #rhetoric #LGBTQ #IntersectionalFeminist #AudreLorde #archives

“VanHaitsma disrupts the accounts of white women’s romantic friendships in her interludes. First, she imagines that Primus and Brown were able to spend ample time together, sneaking between each other’s rooms each night, generating an erotic that fueled their abolitionist endeavors. Employing Hartman’s critical fabulation, VanHaitsma imagines an alternative reason why the letters between Primus and Brown stop. Instead of Brown marrying a man, VanHaitsma envisions a life in which Brown was hired to work at the Primus Institute. Their erotic continues to fuel their educational pursuits and racial justice advocacy as they live and work side by side as white women did. Finally, VanHaitsma imagines a future archive that includes the lost letters that Primus wrote to Brown, allowing more fuller rhetorical attention to this partnership. In this interlude, Vanhaitsma acknowledges the shortcomings of her own imaginings to paint Primus and Brown as cis-women in a stable queer relationship in short stories that fall between the pages of larger stories about white women. She admits that in some way she is trying to ‘console’ herself with these imaginings, and perhaps that is not fair to these women.”

Building on last week’s posts, here’s Katie O’Malley Perrin’s summary in the Peitho review of my book’s imaginative interludes (2/3). More on those shortcomings tomorrow!

#TeamRhetoric #TeamFemRhet #rhetoric #LGBTQ #LGBTQHistory #WomensHistory #feminist #IntersectionalFeminist #AudreLorde #archives

More gardening bliss with my growing fam #HappyValley #AcademicMom #PollinatorGarden #lupine

"VanHaitsma is keenly aware of the settler colonialism and racism infusing the archives of her study, particularly in the way details about Primus’s and Brown’s lives are absent. Throughout the book, VanHaitsma persistently uses decolonial language in acknowledging the settler occupied lands on which the rhetorical practices of the erotic took place. Through the critical fabulation in the imaginative interludes, VanHaitsma displays awareness of the ways structural racism informs her study. These imaginative interludes allow VanHaitsma to depict a new story for Primus and Brown that interrupts the white eroto-historiography of her other chapters."

The imaginative interludes are where I took greatest risks, so my fav part of Peitho review is how O'Malley Perrin reflects on their goals, critical promise, and shortcomings. Here’s her introduction to them (1/3):

#TeamRhetoric #TeamFemRhet #LGBTQ #IntersectionalFeminist #AudreLorde #archives

Thanks to Katie O’Malley Perrin & Peitho associate editor Jennifer Nish for first review of my new book! Here’s the opening paragraph, and I’ll share more soon 💕🌈💕

#TeamRhetoric #TeamFemRhet #rhetoric #LGBTQ #LGBTQHistory #WomensHistory #feminist #IntersectionalFeminist #AudreLorde #archives

Look what showed up on a Pittsburgh subreddit today! What an unexpected, wild, beautiful that day was 11 years ago #LGBTQ #queer #LGBTQHistory #QueerPittsburgh

Already helping momma weed. Not yet distinguishing between goldenrod and milkweed 💕

#HappyValley #AcademicMom #PollinatorGarden

Nothing says “professor whose life got out of balance this spring” like garden beds not planted until mid-May 🤣

#HappyValley #AcademicMom #garden

First time exceeding the half marathon distance since week before dream-come-true embryo transfer. Been a long road back from postpartum injury. Grateful for PT, trails, strength training, and everyone who has played with my kids while I ran #running #TrailRunning #HappyValley #RunningMom

Program information for panel E.12 Remixing the “Why” of Feminist Rhetorical History. Thursday, 4:45 pm, in Baltimore 337

Flyer for the book The Erotic as Rhetorical Power: Archives of Romantic Friendship between Women Teachers. Book details available at https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814215609.html

Hey #4C25, I have a few copies of my new book, The Erotic as Rhetorical Power: Archives of Romantic Friendship between Women Teachers, to give away at panel E.12 Remixing the “Why” of Feminist Rhetorical History. If you’d like a copy, please come say “hi” and let me know! #TeamRhetoric #TeamFemRhet

Sober Academics group is meeting online tonight at Cs - Wed. 4/9 at 8:30 PM ET, via Zoom! Tomorrow we hang out in person!
💻 ☕️
For more info.: @soberacademics.bsky.social
#4C25 #CCCC #NCTE #SoberAcademics #SoberCommunity #SoberAcademia

Postdoctoral Fellow in Indigenous Humanities Summary:With support from the Mellon Foundation, Virginia Commonwealth University invites applications for a one-year postdoctoral fellow position in ...

We're happy to announce a search for a one-year postdoc fellow position in interdisciplinary Indigenous Humanities at the VCU Humanities Research Center (renewable for one additional year) to begin August 2025. Please help us spread the word. Deadline: April 30.

#TeamRhetoric

tinyurl.com/3sah5azr

Heading out to #4c25 with the @cmu.edu #TeamRhetoric ✌️🚐 Catch me on Friday at 12:30 panel H.25 Keeping Crip Company

Mommy’s morning pages 🤣

I keep telling my academic friends to turn their books into short pamphlets and to hand those out for free in their communities. I excerpted a chapter from a friend's book last year, made it into a zine, and so far I've distributed 400 hard copies and it's also available for digital download.

Wide Awake America for 02/18/2025 Podcast Episode · Wide Awake America · 02/18/2025 · 1 sec

It was so fun talking about _Rachel Carson and the power of queer love_ with @nadinesmith.bsky.social on Wide Awake America. @stanfordpress.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

It’s the the queer & feminist guide to running I didn’t even know I needed. An absolute delight! Thank you @lindseyafreeman.bsky.social & Hazel Meyer #running #LGBTQ #queer

It is!

8+ miles of pure joy, sunshine & snow #running #TrailRunning #HappyValley #RunningMom

Baby bear’s first run in the jog stroller ❤️ Liked it even in the freezing cold, so we’re going to have some beautiful spring mornings together!

#running #HappyValley #RunningMom

Church of the long run: 7+ miles, slow on ice and slush, grateful for yak trax

#TrailRunning #hiking #HappyValley

Umm…