Pamela VanHaitsma
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pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
Pamela VanHaitsma
@pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
570 followers 640 following 57 posts
Outdoorsy sneaker femme. Scholar of rhetoric & archives, gender & sexuality. ART mom.
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pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
Tomorrow’s the 1-year anniversary of my book’s release 🎉❤️ I’ve created a zine to share some of it with more people. Here’s a form to request a copy & I’ll have them at NCA & RSA too!

forms.gle/QzE2Kw9W1XTt...

#TeamRhetoric #LGBTQ #LGBTQHistory #AudreLorde #archives #zines #EroticAsRhetoricalPower
To request a copy of the zine
If you'd like to receive a hard copy of the zine version of The Erotic as Rhetorical Power: Archives of Romantic Friendship between Women Teachers, please enter your information here. Thank you!
forms.gle
October 3, 2025 at 6:04 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
With 1-year anniversary of book’s release approaching, I’ve been reflecting on what I want the work to do. I created a zine to share with more people. Now reacquainting myself w/ folds & copy machines—more next week on how to request! #TeamRhetoric #LGBTQ #archives #zines #EroticAsRhetoricalPower
September 26, 2025 at 12:58 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
I’m delighted to share that The Erotic as Rhetorical Power: Archives of Romantic Friendship between Women Teachers is being recognized with the Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award from the Public Address Division of the National Communication Association 💕🌈💕 #TeamRhetoric #LGBTQ #LGBTQHistory #archives
September 22, 2025 at 4:08 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
Banked another 20-miler & completed highest volume training week ever: 43+ miles on feet & 2 heavy lifts (plus a bike commute). 5 weeks until #TusseyMountainBack 50k! #HappyValley #running #TrailRunning #UltraMarathon
September 21, 2025 at 4:22 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
Many thanks to Zachary Kemp & Women’s Studies in Communication book reviews editor Lydia Huerta for the second review of my book! 💕🌈💕

#TeamRhetoric #TeamFemRhet #rhetoric #LGBTQ #LGBTQHistory #WomensHistory #feminist #IntersectionalFeminist #AudreLorde #archives
September 17, 2025 at 5:47 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
Ran my first 20-miler in nearly a decade! It wasn’t pretty, but I feel satisfied (& my backyard is pretty ☺️) 8 weeks until the #TusseyMountainBack 50k!

#HappyValley #running #TrailRunning #UltraMarathon #monarch #PollinatorGarden
August 31, 2025 at 7:19 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
“The Pink Scar is an urgently needed book. In the face of ongoing and renewed LGBTQ+ erasure from public memory, this book is a must-read for students of public memory and anyone interested in Holocaust and/or LGBTQ+ history.” @psupress.bsky.social @tomdunn26.bsky.social

#TeamRhetoric #LGBTQ
August 27, 2025 at 1:39 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
My amazing office yesterday…during the one hour I could stand the heat #monarch #milkweed #BeeBalm #HummingbirdMoth #HappyValley #PollinatorGarden
July 30, 2025 at 12:19 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
Look who I met on my run earlier this morning? #RegalMoth 13+ weeks until the #TusseyMountainBack #HappyValley #running #TrailRunning #UltraMarathon
July 24, 2025 at 2:22 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
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
July 22, 2025 at 3:51 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
When mama trains for a 50k 🤣 16 weeks until the #TusseyMountainBack!
#HappyValley #running #TrailRunning #UltraMarathon
July 4, 2025 at 6:01 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
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
June 30, 2025 at 12:59 AM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
Mountain Laurel and tadpoles during today’s 10-miler #HappyValley #running #TrailRunning
June 1, 2025 at 7:41 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
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
May 29, 2025 at 1:50 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
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
"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."
May 28, 2025 at 3:03 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
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
“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.”
May 27, 2025 at 6:49 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
More gardening bliss with my growing fam #HappyValley #AcademicMom #PollinatorGarden #lupine
May 25, 2025 at 12:41 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
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
"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."
May 23, 2025 at 1:50 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
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
May 22, 2025 at 6:58 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
Look what showed up on a Pittsburgh subreddit today! What an unexpected, wild, beautiful that day was 11 years ago #LGBTQ #queer #LGBTQHistory #QueerPittsburgh
May 21, 2025 at 7:06 PM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
Already helping momma weed. Not yet distinguishing between goldenrod and milkweed 💕

#HappyValley #AcademicMom #PollinatorGarden
May 20, 2025 at 12:19 AM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
Nothing says “professor whose life got out of balance this spring” like garden beds not planted until mid-May 🤣

#HappyValley #AcademicMom #garden
May 20, 2025 at 12:08 AM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
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
April 14, 2025 at 12:20 AM
pamelavanhaitsma.bsky.social
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
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
April 10, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Pamela VanHaitsma
drprofb.bsky.social
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
April 9, 2025 at 9:55 PM