---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 00:03:28 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: VICTORIA 19th-Century British Culture & Society
<[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 20 Jun 1999 to 21 Jun 1999 (#1999-63)
There are 10 messages totalling 286 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Degree query (6)
2. Green Grow the Rushes-O.....
3. Doctor (PhD/DPhil etc), Doctor (MB,BCh)
4. Call for papers: Secretarial Mediation in Literature (book, 30/11/99)
5. 'classic' 19th c. American feminist philosophical text
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 04:28:41 -0400
From: Chris Willis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Degree query
Hi!
>> Marie Stopes was often supposed to be
>> a medical dr because she called herself 'Dr' Stopes on the basis of her
PhD
>> in palaeobotany (?sp!) from Munich - and accrued a certain amount of
flak
>> for doing so.
Could this have been partly because of her gender? Am I right in thinking
women couldn't take doctorates at most UK universities until well into the
20C? Prejudice against women with doctorates certainly continued well into
the late 20C - I remember in the 1970s or 80s (?) there were complaints
about UK newspapers which insisted on referring to US politiican Geraldine
Ferraro as "Ms" even though she had a doctorate. To add insult to injury,
they often referred to "Dr Henry Kissinger" in the same paragraph!
Come to think of it, does anyone know when UK women were first able to take
doctorates? I'm presuming it would have been late 19C at the redbricks
and/or the Scottish universites.
>> I wonder to what extent - in the UK, anyway - the use of the
>> title of Dr outside the strictly academic milieu has been at all
general,
>> except for medics and to some extent clerics with a DD (Dr Arnold e.g.)
It applies outside the academic milieu as well. I know quite a few people
who are still "Dr" even though they left academia after doing their PhDs.
Oddly enough it's not used for lawyers - barristers who have an LLD are
referred to as "Mr" or "Ms", and it's considered a dreadful solecism to
refer to them as "Dr" (rather like surgeons, who are always called called
"Mr" or "Ms" rather than "Dr").
Am I right in thinking that for medics it's a job title that they get even
when they haven't a doctorate?
All the best
Chris
===========================================
Chris Willis
English Dept
Birkbeck College
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX
[log in to unmask] OR
[log in to unmask]
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Crete/3783/
===========================================
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 11:55:20 +0100
From: JillGrey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Green Grow the Rushes-O.....
Thank you so much for the wonderful assortment of suggestions for
the origin of this song.
I trust, Mercy Tanter, that they'll provide you with a source of
ammunition next time your family strikes up!
Thanks again...I'm very grateful.
Jill Grey
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 08:21:10 -0400
From: "David E. Latane" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Degree query
On Mon, 21 Jun 1999, Chris Willis wrote:
> >> I wonder to what extent - in the UK, anyway - the use of the
> >> title of Dr outside the strictly academic milieu has been at all
> general,
> >> except for medics and to some extent clerics with a DD (Dr Arnold e.g.)
>
> It applies outside the academic milieu as well. I know quite a few people
> who are still "Dr" even though they left academia after doing their PhDs.
>
Coming out of the medieval world, Doctor was related most closely to
divines. "Learned Doctors," etc. William Maginn is an unusual case, where
the sobriquet "The Doctor" was applied at least semi-satirically, though
he had in fact earned an LL.D. from Dublin in 1819 (age 25, the youngest
to receive one to that time--tho he began college at 11). The notice in
the Times is titled "The late Dr. Maginn"--but I don't know if other
LL.D.'s would have been so treated.
David Latane
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 08:20:04 -0400
From: Patrick Scott <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Doctor (PhD/DPhil etc), Doctor (MB,BCh)
Paradoxically, of course, it was in the mid-19th century that medical =
practitioners in Britain started arrogating to themselves the title of Dr. =
whatever their actual degree or professional membership even a licentiate =
in medicine and sugery of the Society of Apothecaries of Dublin carried =
the title). Apart from the German universities, Victorian non-medical =
doctorates were typically DDs (to which one typically 'proceeded' rather =
than for which one typically studied), until London made the DSc a career =
research degree for scientists. In my experience, because it was within =
living memory not standard for British academics in the humanities to have =
a PhD/DPhil), and because most university teachers don't (or didn't) have =
the title of Professor), British universities are more punctilious about =
calling people Doctor than US ones, where everybody has one and everyone =
is a professor. In Anstey's Vice Versa, recalling the 1860s, the title =
"Doctor" was viewed as very much a piece of suspect windowdressing =
purchased from diploma-mills by those on the fringes of freemarket =
secondary education.=20
Patrick Scott.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 14:57:32 +0100
From: Leah Price <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Call for papers: Secretarial Mediation in Literature (book, 30/11/99)
Call for papers
Invisible Hands:
Secretarial Mediation in Literature and Culture,
1750-2000
This collection of essays will focus on the representation (and
non-representation) of the secretary. Although the figure who writes in
the place of another is not a recent invention, the nature of secretarial
agency has changed with the development of the modern office, new
technologies from the dictaphone to the computer, women's entrance into
the workforce, automatic writing, etc. In the wake of recent work such as
Friedrich Kittler's, deconstructive explorations of the relation between
speech and writing have begun to engage with historical investigations of
the material technologies of communication. Less attention, however, has
been given to the experience of inhabiting the position of a human writing
implement.
Possible questions include but are not limited to:
--How do literary writers represent literal writers (secretaries,
scriveners, copyists, typists)?
--How do technologies for transposing the aural to the written or the
singular to the multiple change the status of the text? What difference
does it make whether those operations are credited to a person or a thing?
--What happens when the secretary speaks in her (or his) own voice or
writes in her (or his) own name -- and what difference does the
secretary's gender make?
--What role should the material production, transmission, and retrieval of
texts play in literary theory?
--What is at stake in cyberculture's fascination with mechanical
reproduction? What power (if any) do new technologies have to transform
divisions of textual labor?
Completed articles of approximately 8,000-10,000 words preferred, but
2-page proposals will also be accepted. Deadline: 30 November 1999.
Informal inquiries welcome to:
Pam Thurschwell
Queens' College
Cambridge CB3 9ET
[log in to unmask]
Leah Price
Girton College
Cambridge CB3 0JG
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 08:38:21 -0700
From: Sheldon Goldfarb <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Degree query
Then there was Dr. Johnson, whose degree as I recall was only honourary,
and yet who was (and even is still today) referred to as Doctor--for
instance, in the opening pages of _Vanity Fair_, where there is also a
reference to the headmaster of Charterhouse school as "Dr.
Raine"--presumably the headmaster was not a medical doctor.
A Johnson expert I knew as a graduate student greatly resented the "Dr."
title attached to Johnson's name, saying it misrepresented him, made him
sound like a stuffy Victorian icon. He blamed it all on Boswell, who
apparently was the first to start referring to his friend as Dr. Johnson.
Sheldon Goldfarb
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 11:47:03 -0400
From: richard vandewetering <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: 'classic' 19th c. American feminist philosophical text
Dear Victorianists
a colleague asked me to nominate the pre-eminient (classic) 19th
c. American feminist philosophical text . Any suggestions?
Richard VandeWetering
Univ of Western Ontario
London, Ont.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 11:50:33 -0400
From: "Stamper, Gregory" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Degree query
The esteemed Donald Greene always appeared to be really irritated by the
honorary doctorate that was pinned on Johnson, and also seemed to directly
blame Boswell for it. But then Greene tended to blame Boswell for many,
many Johnsonian transgressions, for reasons that I have never quite
determined.
Regards,
Greg Stamper
Dayton, OH
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 11:11:20 -0500
From: Elaine Ostry <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Degree query
In North America, all medical doctors are called Dr.---especially surgeons,
I would say!
Elaine Ostry
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 19:41:16 +0100
From: Lesley Hall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Degree query
>Am I right in thinking that for medics it's a job title that they get even
>when they haven't a doctorate?
>
Yes: this was a point Stopes made, that a mere MB BS could call him/herself
'doctor', whereas she had a the higher degree. It was a German PhD (this
came up in the famous libel trial) - I don't think she could have got one in
her subject in the UK, but may be wrong on this.
I'm not sure it's the gender thing - at least some of the flak was from
_women_ doctors! - which caused the disapproval. It was more that she was
representing herself to the world as (or not taking steps to disabuse
people of the presumption that she was) a medical doctor.
Lesley Hall
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
End of VICTORIA Digest - 20 Jun 1999 to 21 Jun 1999 (#1999-63)
**************************************************************
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|
