The Mrs
Wednesday, March 1st, 2006I blogged this over on Crooked Timber yesterday. It got tons of comments (over 80 as I write this) many of which are very interesting so I recommend checking that out. Kevin Drum picked it up - and added an interesting comment about how sports commentators refer to tennis players - so you may want to check that out as well (in addition to Kevin’s point, some of the 130+ comments there are also an interesting read).
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On occasion, I get emails in which people address me as Mrs. Hargittai. I’m not suggesting that people need know my personal history or preferences. However, if you are going to contact someone in a professional context and they have a Ph.D. and they teach at a university (both of which are very clear on their homepage where you probably got their email address in the first place), wouldn’t you opt for Dr. or Professor?
Most of the time when someone contacts me and says “Dear Dr. Hargittai” or “Dear Professor Hargittai” the first line of my response is: “Dear X, please call me Eszter.” So the status marker that comes with these is not what’s of interest to me. Rather, I’m intrigued by how gender ties into all this and would love to hear how male junior faculty get addressed in such situations.
Today, I received a message that had an interesting additional component:
Dear Mrs. Hargittai,
Professor Name-of-one-of-my-senior-male-colleagues recommended that I get in touch with you.
