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.