cosmic_llin

Eep – I didn't mean to volunteer, mostly because I did one of these recently (http://sophia-gratia.livejournal.com/13674.html). And you've chosen some of the same icons as your predecessor – but I'll respond to the other two here.

'i'm in ur history...'
This icon – and a few others in queer and POC versions – was made by angevin2 in response to one of those direly stupid essays that comes out now and then decrying the corruption of academe by irrelevant and frivolous study of insignificant people like ladies and gays and blacks and other people with no business in Proper History. Like I said: direly stupid. A significant part of my professional life is devoted to the history of women – I wrote my M.A. thesis on the poetics of gender in early modern English Catholic devotional works, and I teach a course on premodern women's writing. The belief that women are worth intellectual energy is still, alas, a controversially political one. It's my belief that seeking the pasts of structures like gender and sexuality can not only uncover hidden histories, but help us to understand our present. Because the way we live those structures now is fundamentally different from the way earlier cultures lived them, and because that history reveals that our present modes of thought are not self-evident or essential – nor was it ever inevitable that we would come to think of gender etc. as we do now. There is activist, as well as intellectual, potential in studying these histories – that's why I do what I do. I also use this icon when discussing women in fandom – the value of focusing fic on minor female characters, for example, is in some ways analogous to the value of discussing their historical counterparts.

As for the young woman and her book, she's Mary Magdalen as portrayed in Rogier van der Weyden's gorgeous painting (http://wimminwiselpts.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/rogier_van_der_weyden__mary_magdalene__c_1445.jpg). One of my favorite features of premodern Western Christian painting is the trope of the Biblical woman reading – countless annunciations that depict Mary at her book as Gabriel enters with his 'Ave' on his lips, for example. The van der Weyden Magdalen hangs above my desk in a beautiful reproduction that I bought at the National Gallery a few summers ago. (You should go and visit the painting in all its original glory!) The Magdalen is especially important to me as a figure in the history of Christian thought – that same M.A. thesis focused on her, as well. And I love the quiet moment that this painting depicts – it evokes a room in which many other things are happening, but chooses to focus on this woman's quiet perusal of a book probably meant to represent scripture. A wonderfully evocative moment – and a really stunning bit of anachronistic looping, in which the Magdalen is medievalized and represented as reading an account of her own time. I really, really love it. In case you couldn't tell. I had been needing some icons to do with both the period I study and with religion, so I made this one and my Augustine one to start filling the gap. Someone wrote in response to one of my Kira fics that "fandom needs more theology" – and I couldn't agree more. Just as soon as I have time to write it, my fandom will have more theology!

Oops, missed one! But I think Bev and "squee" in the same place are sort of self-explanatory, don't you? She's just so freaking cute. Simple as that. (I rewatched "The Naked Now" recently to cure a bout of the creeping blue woozies, and oh my GOD the cute!) The cap is from a great scene (though I can't recall the episode) where Bev is pwning Riker at poker, which I just love. (I also love the way it works at the end of this vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKBTqdJVoH8), which you've probably seen and liked as much as I did.)