***** Sender: trans-academic-request at mailbase.ac.uk
Dear E-Mail Folk,
My last e-mail from this address. I've left Iowa, the state, town, and university. Lovely places, wonderful for my growth these 19 years, and wonderful in their reaction to my recent changes, but it's time, I think . . . hope.
I'm in southern California from January 1 to June 15, as a visiting fellow (how I dislike that word!) at the Center for Ideas and Society at UC Riverside: Highlander Hall C227, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0439. My home address in Riverside is Concord Village Apartments #130, 1251 Massachusetts Ave., Riverside, CA 92507.
But starting now my e-mail will be: deirdre2 at uic.edu. Why? Because:
In June I start at the University of Illinois at Chicago as, very gloriously, University Professor of the Human Sciences. The "Human Sciences" covers everything from philosophy through economics to literary criticism. All the details are not worked out, but I will be in at least four departments, reflecting who I am and will be instead of merely who I was, once. It is difficult to understand, I realize, that I want to be among the disciplines, helpful to them I hope, but not a Normal Scientist in any one. You don't get it? Join the crowd.
My home address starting late June is an elegant loft on "Printers' Row," just south of the Loop. Five blocks up, three over from the Art Institute (and Marshall Fields!). Franklin Building #206, 720 S. Dearborn, Chicago, IL 60605. Now you have NO excuse not to visit me: the conventions in Chicago meet within minutes of my front door.
Two months of each year, probably late November-December and then in May, I'll be a Tinbergen Distinguished Professor of Various Things at Rotterdam's Erasmusuniversiteit (no, I still don't know Dutch!)
And Jane Austen (known as Janie the Yorkshire terrier) and I will continue wandering, but from a Chicago base and address. I'm loving it there. I had forgotten how much I love Chicago, hog butcher, stacker of wheat . . . once. . . and who knows what it will be?
Love,
Deirdre McCloskey
PS: Crossing: A Memoir was named a Notable Book of 1999 by the NY Times Book Review. I am so pleased. Tune in to Weekend All Things Considered January 8 or 9 to hear Jacki Lyden tell about the book and my life. If you require a whole slice, go to Slate, the web magazine, and search the archives for my "diary" for the week of November 30, early December 1999. Please do NOT investigate The Fray for that week in which the vilest of so-called "religious" conservativces go after me. I noticed that the people who defended me then were literate. Inference? *****