Progress Monitor

Fellow Inhabitants, Did you notice my little progress counter at the bottom of the page? I tried to put it on the side of the page, but the counter was cut off. I think if you click on it, you'll go to a site that will allow you to get a counter of your own!

Interesting . . .

So I read a paper about Eliza that indicates she and her long-time romantic partner Hatchett translated and published actual c18 porn. That might complicate my case a bit. That's good though--will prevent me from being too simplistic. I'm enjoying Hunter's Before Novels, but I'm going through it too slowly. I need to pick up the pace this week. I NEED to start doing more work in the evenings, but I'm stuck on summer mode--just watching TV shows from Netflix. Burn Notice. Mad Men. We're going through Firefly again. Gotta hit the books harder if I'm really going to make progress. How many pages are you reading per week, Maine?

Monday or Tuesday, I'll post some goals for the week.

So glad Amstr is on board! And now me . . .

As my dear friends know, I am nine months into my Ph.D. program at Aberystwyth University (formerly University of Wales, Aberystwyth). UK programs don't tend to have the post-master's coursework requirements that we have here in the U.S., so I'm jumping right into the dissertation (or "thesis" as it's called there). In some ways, this is great because I get to do my own thing straight away. But in some ways it's not so great because I'm really on my own as I try to learn enough to be an expert. I imagine this will all take me five or so more years since I have full-time job and the two kiddie-poos!

In early summer, I wrote about 5000 words for my supervisor (who is awesome) that outlined the central part of my argument, but now the real work begins. I'm writing about Eliza Haywood, and I have SO much to learn about the social and philosophical contexts that surround her work. For my dissertation, I will be writing about the sex vs. virtue opposition that shapes much of the criticism of her work, arguing that such a binary opposition presents a false dilemma. In addition to reading Haywood's giant oeuvre, I need to research c18 British philosophy and culture, the development of the novel as a genre, and theories about narrative, rhetoric, and dialogic texts.

It's hard to know what exact direction to take at this point, but this week I'm reading Christine Gerrard's book Aaron Hill: The Muses' Projector 1685-1750 and J. Paul Hunter's Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth Century Fiction. (Gerrard's book is fun because reading about the folks in the Hillarian circle is a bit like reading Hollywood gossip.) I also have a goals this week that include printing out some database articles and tracking down an important text that isn't available locally.

I jealous that both of you (Amstr and Maine) are close to good research libraries.

A question for my fellow dissers: Do you want this blog available for all to see? or just invited guests? Anybody else we should invite?

Amstr's first report

I'm in. I'm spending more time writing about the dissertation and the process than actually writing the dissertation right now anyway.

Here's my status: I'm ABD in Ren. Lit. at UMass Amherst. I passed my two-area exams last December in "Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Women Writers" and "Spenser and Shakespeare: Imagining Female Communities." My dissertation is quite broadly defined right now as "something to do with female social networks in the Renaissance--maybe." I'm easing into the research with Anne Clifford's diaries, a bio of QEI, and The Merry Wives of Windsor after taking much of the year off to move across the country and to help my kids (ages 3 and 1) adjust to living in Silicon Valley. I expect to take another three years to finish.

An Invitation

Hey, Sharmaine and Anne-Marie. Shall we share our dissertation troubles and triumphs on a blog together? Just an idea . . . Sally