The Dog Ate My Book

I will start this post by announcing that I received the copy of Certain Lively Episodes that I ordered. And today, my dog ate about 1/8 of it, including the cover. Thank the stars I got it cheap. At first, I thought he'd eaten the expensive copy of the Anne Conway bio that I just got. I think I might have to order another copy of Episodes since I'll probably be using that one a lot. It's kinds of hard to manage as is.

Quick snippets: I haven't been working much because I've got in-laws in town ALL week. But last week I did do most of my bibliography for "Chapter One" and a rough outline for said chapter. These are the things I'll send to my advisor by next Monday (a week before I arrive). I'll probably add to them a bit before I send them, but I think they should be ready in time.

As I was doing the bib, I put some books in my Amazon.com shopping cart, including some books by/about some of the women Platonists in the late c17--Anne Conway, Katherine Philips, Mary Astell, Elizabeth Singer Rowe. I received and started reading the Conway book today. I'm very eager to read the slender Philips bio that I ordered.

I've smoothed out some of the travel plans, but I need to call the travel agent tomorrow to find out why she hasn't called me about my train tix (which should have arrived at the travel agency by now). I still need to call one hotel to change my reservations and ask for a refund for two days (I'll still be there five) even though their website says they don't give refunds. Unfortunately, the hotel charged my credit card back when the dollar was weak.

Ah, well.

Daily Habits

A friend who's just about done drafting his dissertation, recommended a PhinisheD post on daily habits for working on a dissertation. Basically, the guy writes for 4 hours a day--40 minutes of focused writing, a 20-minute break in which he can do anything he wants but sit down (or lie down). At the end of every 40 min, he assesses what he's done and sets out a specific writing task for the next 40 min. He also does 3 pages of freewriting first thing every morning (a la Julia Cameron).

Any thoughts on daily habits that work for you?

Dissertations, Publishing, Conferences, and Snippet

I’ll do the snippet first: I didn’t get through Clifford’s diary last week. :( So that’s on the schedule for this week again. I got Elizabeth I’s Collected Works in the mail on Friday, so I’m planning to start with speeches and poetry she wrote near her ascension and then later in her reign to see how she represents herself (and whether the representations change over time). I’m particularly interested in finding out how she describes herself as mother (of England) and daughter (of HVIII). (This is her coronation portrait.)

Dissertation & Conferences: a great friend in Mass who actually finished his dissertation said the easiest chapters to write were ones based on conference papers he presented. He recommended doing as many conferences as material (or major ideas) in the diss, just as a place to workshop ideas and work through them once before having to work them into a chapter.

Publishing: My first job at UMass was as an Editorial Assistant for English Literary Renaissance, and it was amazing training for getting ready to submit to a journal. Making sure the work is appropriate to the journal is key, and having an idea of who’s on the local board (and thus reviewing articles) doesn’t hurt either. (If you write on Keats, but the local Keats guy on the editorial board totally disagrees with your approach, even an amazing essay might get vetoed.) The biggest error grad students made was not taking the work up a level from the dissertation--some would even leave in language that gave away it was a dissertation chapter. Just like with grading papers, the amazing essays really stood out. But just like any process where a group makes a decision, one person’s no vote and argument against could sink a really good essay, so don’t take rejections as a necessary statement on the quality of the work. Also, acceptance rates vary with the size of the backlog: at one point, we had 2 years’ worth of essays waiting to be published, so we accepted very few new essays. Again, sometimes the acceptance/rejection just comes down to timing. One thing I really appreciated about ELR is that the editorial board sent out comments on rejected essays, and if they thought the work was good but not appropriate for ELR, they would suggest other journals that might accept the work. From what I understand, most journals don’t do this, but it can be really valuable to submit to ones who do.

The info on chapters and such was really interesting, SafiaK. Thanks for passing along the info.

Another interesting tidbit on dissertation chapters: one of my advisors championed the idea of having one really solid chapter that had a relatively complex or nuanced argument to submit as the writing sample in the job packet, and another chapter that was really interesting but pretty straightforward that could turn into a job talk. The other chapters, she thought, could be not quite so good (but passable) and you’d have what you needed to get from dissertation to job (and then to book, if you wanted to go that route).

GEW, how's the trip prep going?

from the Notebook

Thanks for the book titles, GEW! I'm going to check them out.

I was looking over some of last year's notes from Literary Scholarship and thought I'd report on them. I wouldn't call some of these things rules. Anne was careful to point out that many of these things were general observations and suggestions, and that there were also many exceptions.

Dissertation Stuff

• An ideal dissertation is 5 or 6 chapters (including the Introduction and Conclusion) and 4 chapters is the absolute minimum. It often breaks down as follows: Introduction / 3 chapters of expansion / Conclusion (I'm not spelling out numbers for quick reference purposes). ;)
• Single-author books are the most difficult books to publish in the U.S.
• Publishers love cross-over books.
• How many primary works in a chapter? In general terms, mention 6. In detail, mention less.
• We must research journals if we're going to submit something for publication because they are looking for reasons NOT to publish us.
• Join email lists for organizations that interest us. Watch for specialized calls for papers.
  
• Listen to committee's advice.
• Routledge is very open to publishing dissertations in one field.
  

Conference Stuff

• One article in a major journal is more important than 4 articles in small journals.
• Give 2-3 conference papers; anymore won't help.
• Need thesis, a point, for conference proposals (which shouldn't be more than 1 page). papers should be 8-10 pages; we should make only 1 point; allow for 2 1/2 minutes per page (reading aloud).
  

Conference Proposals

• Establish place in critical conversation right away.
• Have a claim to originality.
• "In this paper I will argue that ..." Clumsy is okay if it's clear.
• Avoid rhetorical questions.
• Avoid not knowing where you are going.
• Have a point.
• Remember that nobody remembers what the proposal says when we give the paper.
• (Contradicting what she said before): There doesn't have to be just 1 point: It can be 1 complex idea but stated in a single sentence.

More later!

Books about PhDing

A while back, I read a couple of books about doing the PhD, the dissertation in particular. Both of my were written with the British system in mind but would apply to American PhDs, too. My favorite of the two was Patrick Dunleavy's Authoring a PhD: How to Plan, Draft, Write, and Finish a Doctoral Thesis or Dissertation. I think I need to read it again.

The other book was How to Get a PhD: A Handbook for Students and their Supervisors (Phillips and Pugh). I don't remember it as well, so I don't think it did that much for me. I remember seeing a couple of other similar books that seemed interesting, but didn't get around to reading them.

Snippets

So, these were the goals last week. I've put the status in brackets:

• A couple of novellas by EH [No, but I read her "Discourse" which in an important appendix to a work]
  
• Read some of Ros Ballaster's Seductive Forms: Women's Amatory Fiction from 1684-1740 (at least the introduction and EH chapters, maybe more) [Read intro and half of the EH chapter]
  
• Read another chapter or two of Certain Lively Episodes [no, but I ordered my own copy for 3.95]
  
• Print and finish Shaftbury's Moralists [printed and read the next 75 pages, enough to go back to Prince]
  
• Then, I should probably go back to Michael Prince (I had to stop because I needed some Shaftsbury background before I could continue), but I really want to try Michael McKeon again to see if I can get what he's all about. [finished Prince's chapter on Shaftsbury, still don't really understand McKeon very well]

The past two days, I've only had about 1.5 hours to work. Today, I read some short excerpts by Katherine Philips and Margaret Cavendish. I'm not quite sure what I'll do next. Before I continue with Prince, I need to read some Berkeley. I also want to read more Cavendish and Philips. I want to read a recent book about Anne Conway. I want to read more about the Cambridge Platonists. I want to read Habermas. I'll get to work Thursday and Friday, and I think maybe I should start working on my bibliography and rough outline since I should probably send them to my supervisor within the next 10 days. Eegads!

Advisor and Snippets

I heard back from my advisor already. His email reminded me that he’s a pretty fantastic advisor. He’s willing to read my writing whenever I want to send it, in whatever state it’s in, and will vary his approach to responding accordingly. He’s already given me a gentle “assignment” to start with. And he’s really flexible about the prospectus: it could be a sentence long, or it could be more fully developed but handed in after I have chapters done.

My first writing assignment toward the dissertation is to read one of the recently published collections of QEI’s own writing and compare her representations of herself to Spenser’s representations of her. I’ve ordered the QEI, and am eager to get started.

In the meantime, I’m planning to finish up Anne Clifford’s diary, read the Spenser Encyclopedia sections on QEI, and start Sidney’s Old Arcadia. I’m also planning to dig in to the Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations.

SafiaK, how did advisor-talk go this week?
GEW, I hope your next two weeks go well. It's tough to do kids and work!
Looking forward to your updates.

Busy Mommying

I've been busy mommying and haven't had much time to work or post. Later this week, I'll offer some snippets. I have lots to do in the next two weeks before I head across the pond! Time just flies by.

A Real Post Soon . . .

It's late, and I need to wrap up the day with port and chocolate and some off-line time, but I'll post again soon with a progress update, a note about what I'm sending my advisor before my visit, and a couple of good book recommendations.

Night-night.

Avoiding Shame

I just emailed my advisor. Finally. The last time I spoke with him was last December after my exam. The first email I drafted was dated September 8. Sheesh. Avoidance at it's best. I'm now committed to sending him at least monthly updates, so I can't avoid any more.

One really good and really terrifying piece of advisor advice from Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day: Meet with your advisor "even if you've written nothing--in fact, particularly if you've written nothing." It does seem like the best time to let your advisor do her job and advise you, but it also feels terrible to go admit to being stuck.

I've also just started reading the first section of A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, adapted from Booth, Colomb, and Williams's The Craft of Research. So far it's a great reminder of how to dig into a topic and take an argument through the "so what" stage.

Any other recommendations of writing on writing a dissertation?

SA vs MA

I tried to paste my 0% counter, but couldn't figure out how to do it:( I love the blog! This is very helpful. I have to say that I haven't been able to get a read on the single-author vs. multi-author dissertations in my department. I might go on the long 19th c. blog and ask. From what I've heard, people in the department seem a bit more worried about 1) the organization of the chapters with respect to the authors, and 2) writing about too many authors. There were a lot of groans around and exclamations of sympathy for one woman who is writing her dissertation on a particular philosophical "idea" and who has decided to dedicate a single chapter to each author and his/her relationship to that idea. The alternative would have been to divide the chapters by sub-themes and include authors as they came up within each chapter. Did all of that make sense?

In any case, it seems as though whatever strategy helps us strengthen our position, explore our possibilities, and contribute something new ... works. I'm all over the place this week, so I'm not sure I should list my goals. More later.

More on Single-Author Diss

**Yay for this blog** It's already been so great to get help and feedback from you two, and also not to feel so at sea and alone out here in tech-land. Great idea, GEW. I'm also looking forward to all the great advice you'll give me in the future on handling revisions--my biggest dissertation fear. (Okay, maybe not finishing is my biggest fear. Or maybe it's finishing but not passing.)

I've been thinking a lot this morning about the single-author vs. multiple-author dissertation strategy, mostly because I will have to make the choice at some point. At my uni, most folks do multi-author work: one diss. covered 4 contemporary american novels by different authors; one did a number of medieval romances; one handled bunches of Ren. authors whose work focused on philosophy of science; etc. However, by far the most celebrated dissertation, in my time there, with the most celebrated job offer to follow was a single-author diss. on J.M. Cotzee. I think one has to weigh one's interests and strengths against the common thoughts about the job market. And one's goals can make word-on-the-street about the job market irrelevant. (I also think single-author dissertations are much more common in the UK than here now, though they used to be the norm here, too, I believe.)

I like the idea of a single-author focus because it allows for more depth and perhaps a more focused question. When other authors enter into the work, they become an integral part of the point you're making about your author, rather than becoming the focus of a major part of the argument themselves. It seems like it might be more difficult to structure an argument around three or four separate authors. Let me restate: it seems like it might be more difficult to structure a unified argument around multiple authors. However, the multiple author track does allow one to gather a breadth of knowledge, as GEW points out, and to claim the ability to teach a number of different authors at an “expert” level. It also makes sense if you’re interested in a particular genre (say Renaissance city comedies) or recurring image/theme/character (say, representations of Muslims in Ren. lit).

I feel very lucky that my advisor is one to encourage students to play to their strengths. At one point, he suggested I pursue a structure organized by theme rather than by author, if it suits me better. So I do feel like I have a lot of flexibility.

My next step toward deciding between single and multiple is to read me some Sidney. If my other two authors are Spenser and Shakespeare, Sidney makes an obvious third. Then I’ve got some nice alliteration in my diss title, and I’m dealing with three different genres as well as three different authors. I’ve ordered Sidney’s Arcadia so I can give it a go, but I am still wary of venturing into multiple-author territory, fearing I may be simply overwhelmed by it all. But I just have to keep reminding myself it’s one page at a time, however big the project.

The Single-Author Diss

BTW, that's interesting about the discouragement against single-author dissertations. Now that I think about it, most of the dissertation topics/titles I hear about are include more that one author. But my supervisor has never mentioned it as a problem . . . Hmmm. My single-author focus is probably why I worry about how much "breadth" I'll have when I finish. I do have to do a lot of outside reading about intellectual history, so maybe that will help.

I think this blog is really going to help me out in general.

Realistic ETA

Yes, accurate planning is such an important element. SafiaK, you mentioned on the phone the other day that you are a fast reader. I, however, am not. Which sucks for me when I'm trying to get a lot done. Also, like you, Amstr, I go more slowly at the beginning of a project (or thread) than after I've really got into the thick of things. For example, the week before last, I was reading a general context book on the c18. And I was really reading the thing, and it took me forever. That's what I love about articles. So quick. I've got several books that I need to read in the near future, and they are all going to take me forever. I don't know how I'll do it. In reading blogs by some other scholars, I've seen several references to skimming, etc. I'm not at that point yet where I can just skim books in my area (except for initial skimming just to see if it's relevant).

You might be interested in the blog of "The Adventures of Notorious Ph.D., Girl Scholar." She started her blog at the beginning of her fellowship year (last year). I read just a few of the early postings, and she addresses how she manages time, gets through sources, etc. Her most recent post is about how to make the most of a fellowship year. There are some other blogs I like that are from academics. You can find some links on my other blog.

Snippets from last week:

• Read several articles, mostly on some c18 philosophers. Found some good leads and other references.
• Read several chapters in Certain Lively Episodes (which I just found for about four bucks used on Amazon, which is great because I think I might need to own that one).
• Read Force of Nature; or, the Lucky Disappointment and Lasselia; or, the Self-Abandoned by Eliza Haywood (EH)

To Do this Week:

• A couple of novellas by EH
• Read some of Ros Ballaster's Seductive Forms: Women's Amatory Fiction from 1684-1740 (at least the introduction and EH chapters, maybe more)
• Read another chapter or two of Certain Lively Episodes
• Print and finish Shaftbury's Moralists
• Then, I should probably go back to Michael Prince (I had to stop because I needed some Shaftsbury background before I could continue), but I really want to try Michael McKeon again to see if I can get what he's all about.

Not sure that's "accurate," but I thinking I'm still learning what's accurate and what's not. But I'd like to get a lot done this week since the hubby is going out of town Fri-Sun, and then my mom (helpful daycare provider on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons) will be out of town early next week. So this week needs to be productive. Between now and the UK trip, I'm going to lose a number of work days to various events, holidays, visitors, etc. Its amazing how selfish I want to be when I'm really digging into my own research.

Time

Good words! Good advice!

The distance must be so difficult (!), which is all the more reason to take your professor's words to heart. They have to be available for us as we will eventually have to be available for other grad students down the line.

I really liked what you said about accurate planning -- in all senses of the words. The "snippet" strategy seems very useful in that regard. I think I'll add other elements in addition to time and content to my planning phases. That $300 poem experience really got to me. Ouch! So, discovering our own particular patterns in combination with abilities, needs, strengths, weaknesses, etc. The race car metaphor could work. If Time = Distance/Speed, then how much time we have (or need) to spend on a given task is dependent not only upon how many pages are entailed, but also how fast we can go through those pages. There's always a use for physics! I wonder if there is a way to take car repairs, detailing, and oil changes into account as well. :)

I was just talking about this in reference to Frederic Jameson (Good Enough Woman, you might remember). I was amazed that I spent hours over two days to get through one article. It was a great experience because I broke through to better understanding of the material by not relying on secondary sources to explain it, but I'm going to need to plan for things like that. Thirty pages of theory might take two days whereas an easy 200-page novel like Gatsby could take a short afternoon... hmmm. I'm going to have to identify all the impenetrable texts and plan accordingly.

My wall of shame addition: By a week from Tuesday, I'm going to meet up with my Romantics advisor and work out more of my Radical Romantics list.

Advisors and Time

Thanks for all the advisor talk. It helps me know what I can pitch to my advisors. I feel at quite a disadvantage being so far away from my advisors. I'm definitely more comfortable stopping by office hours or meeting at the coffee shop, rather than emailing purposefully (or actually using the phone). But I need to get more bold. When I mentioned to one professor that I didn't want to bother her, she said (quite forcefully) that no professor should ever be grudging about talking with a grad student about their work; that's the whole reason they're at a research university--to work with grad students. So I need to take that to heart.

SafiaK, I like what you said about accurate planning. I think it helps to look at over all patterns, too (not just pages per hour). For instance, I tend to read much more slowly at the beginning of a project while I'm trying to get my bearings and find a thread to follow. I get much faster as I know which bits of information I can forget quickly. Also, I found it helpful to identify works that were likely to be slower for some other reason. Example: I had to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for one exam, and Middle English (especially this rare dialect) is not my strong suit. Even with a facing page translation, I spent hours on it--all hours that I was paying a babysitter and spending at a coffee shop (and so buying food and drink). I added up the total cost one time, and got so depressed I had to quit counting. I think I paid over $300 for that one poem. I think it would have been much less stressful if I could have just planned for it to be a $300 poem.

Speaking of time: last week was Week 2 of serious dissertation reading. I did manage to get through Spenser's Mother Hubbard's Tale. It was only 1400 lines, though, so it seems like a tiny triumph. I'm hoping to expand my evening reading hours this next week and get through Merry Wives of Windsor and parts of Anne Clifford's diary. I also need to make a deadline to contact my advisor, whom I haven't emailed since last December. Maybe I'll give myself a deadline of next Friday, and this can be my first contribution to the wall of shame. :)

Regarding Advisors and Committees

I woke up thinking about your queries about establishing relationships with advisors, AM. Good question. Good Enough Woman, your relationship with your advisor sounds ideal. I've spent the past year on the look out for my ideal advisor. [I've had a substitute advisor here because the professor origanally assigned to me had to leave for personal reasons. Since my "sub" is a Renaissance scholar, he will not be involved in my dissertation.] So that has been a little odd. I do visit him once a month to ask questions about where I should be, what classes I should take, etc. In the meantime, I've "adopted" a group of advisors for myself based on their interests and how they intersect with mine. I look up their bios, familiarize myself with their work, and schedule face time. I visit three professors I've had fairly frequently -- even if it's just for a few minutes -- to ask questions, run through ideas, and discuss paper topics. I've also forced myself to become more email savy. I write to professors when I can, and I notice that they are all very responsive via email. I've also noticed that some professors get very excited about topics that speak to their interests on some level. They all seem to be pretty hands-off to a certain degree, so I feel as though it's important to initiate as much contact as possible.

I found that one of the most interesting (and I guess surprising) aspects of yesterday's workshop panel was the idea that we have to take a lot of initiate with our orals committees, organizing the committees to suit our interests and accomodate our strengths. I'm not sure I had really thought about it, and frankly, I didn't realize we could have that much power/participation in the process.

A Story: I went to my Romantics professor and told him my ideas for my lists, and he was willing to be on either of two of them -- the critical theory spaces/places list or the Radical Romantics list. His words were, "I can do that." We discussed it further, and he told me that when I had decided what to do I should come up to him and say, "Radical Romantics, yes." In the meantime, he has already given me a list of seven books for two of my lists based on my interests. I don't know if any of that helps, but that's some of what I've been doing.

List of Shame

I completely forgot about the List of Shame. The Long 19th C. group writes a list at the end of each meeting. It's a personalized punch list. What to we have to do and by when? When the deadline arrives and it is not done, bad newwwwws. Shame.

Planning, Snippets, Advisors, and the List of Shame

I like the idea of "snippets." They sound like a good way to monitor progress. Speaking of which ... productive time management was the subject of some discussion at the orals workshop this evening. Everyone on the panel said that accurate planning was crucial to a successful orals experience, and I would think it would apply to the dissertation too. One woman suggested that it helps to familiarize ourselves with how many pages we can read in an hour and then plan blocks of time accordingly. According to our department chair, we should allow a semester and a summer to prepare for the exam; that includes meeting with committee members, compiling the lists, reading the books, taking the notes, and planning to be finished no less that one week before the exam.

Dealing with the Orals Committee

Since our department requires three areas, we need to find and choose three committee members. Very often, according to the workshop panel, the areas and the lists may have as much to do with who you want on your committee as much as what you want to do in the future (more on the latter later). For instance, one woman chose an area outside her concentration simply in order to work with one professor. If we've already established relationships with professors we like, it's a good idea to approach them as soon as possible because they will often be very instrumental in the construction of the reading lists. If it's more of a cold call, one professor intimated that he likes to receive a heads-up e-mail prior to a walk-in.

From what I understand, the following things are most important in our relations with committee members:
1) Speak-Easy. Choose people with whom we feel comfortable having a conversation.
2) Comfort Level. Choose people who make us feel like scholars.
3) Familiarity. Meet with them as often as possible in order to establish a rapport and also to learn their verbal idiosyncrasies. (One student had a horror story about a professor with whom he had only met in person once: The student literally could not understand his questions!).
4) Guidance. Meet with members and give each of them a list of 5 topics that really interest us in relation to the books. They may ignore the lists, but they may not. If we don't, though, they are likely to formulate their questions around what they know best and not what we know best. Horror. Horror.
5) Order. We can choose the order of the committee members and let the chair of the committee know what we would prefer.
6) Opening Statement. We should prepare an opening statement of "approximately" 8 minutes. In preparing the opening statement, we should think about how our lists "talk" to each other and how they may (or may not) relate to our dissertation topic.
7) Conversation at Large. WE want to come in as AUTHORITIES so we should prepare some general statements for conversation. (There were many Palin jokes around this).

The Lists

Down and Dirty:
Each list should have 30-40 books. The ratio of primary to secondary texts varies. Some said 20/20 per list. Others said anywhere from 30/6 to 25/12. I guess we just have to feel our way through that.

Figure out access. What books will we buy, borrow, ILL, or steal?

Write out an ideal syllabus for each list.

Lists can be divided by time, theme, genre, motif, area, whatever ... but they must, or we must, have an agenda.

Stick with the lists once completed. Don't keep adding more texts.

Read JSTOR book reviews to be up on what works got trashed and why.

Some lists I heard today:
1) Euro. Modern/Amer. Modern/Conspiracy Theories
2) The black female body on Stage/in Theory/20th C. Lit
3) 19th C. Con-Men/19th C. Economic Exchange/19th C. Victorian Crime.

It seems as though there is a lot of flexibility -- large and narrow scopes.

I'm really sleepy, so I'm certain that I've forgotten something. But that's what I got for tonight!

Praise Be to the Helpful Advisor

I'll have to think about the snippets strategy. Sounds like a good idea. For right now, you guys are my snippet receivers.

As for advisors, I'm very interested to hear how that works for my fellow dissertanians. The advisor situation is absolutely crucial for me since it is the entire crux of my PhD. As a part-time student at a UK university, I'm not required to take coursework (in general, the UK English programs are light on coursework, more focused on independent research). In addition, I don't think most UK programs have comps and orals. I don't, anyway. So my advisor (or supervisor as she's called) is all I've got. In fact, without her encouragement during the application process, I'm not sure I'm be in a PhD program right now. I chose my university because of her--her interests, her scholarship, and her helpfulness during the application process. When I applied, I had to name who I wanted to work with and explain why I wanted to work with her.

And she has turned out to be awesome. She is my age, has two young kids (as do I), and is someone you just want to be friends with. More than that, she's very helpful, but not intrusive or demanding. When I visited last January, I saw her nearly every day of the week that I was there. One day, I was with her almost all day. She invited me to dinner at her house. On my last night she had dinner with me at my hotel. We had a great time. I don't mean to brag, but I'm just so thankful. Since I'm so far from my university, I'm just so pleased to have her helping me.

Of course, in the end, it's the substance that will matter. She is a prolific scholar and book author. She gets stuff done, so I think she'll be able to help me do the same. When I was there in January, we sketched out a plan, and she indicated some initial pieces of writing that she wanted from me. I completed the first piece in June, and she returned it to me with many in-text comments and suggestions, and she answered all of the questions I asked about future direction, chapters, etc. We discussed me giving her another substantial piece before my next visit in November. However, as I began thinking about it, I just wasn't sure how much writing I could get done (since I have so much to read/learn before I can write much more). She was fine with that. Suggested I work on a bibliography and then worry about writing after the visit. In the end, I think I'll be giving her a rough chapter outline, and I think she'll be cool with that.

Of course she's busy, so I don't hear much from her unless I initiate contact. But occasionally she gives me a heads-up about conferences or articles that I might be interested in.

I also have a "secondary supervisor" whose experience is a perfect complement to that of my primary supervisor, but I don't expect much involvement with her until I have some real drafts going.

Another difference is that when I defend my dissertation (called a "thesis" in the UK) at my viva voce, I do not defend to my supervisor. Rather, I will defend to two examiners that have had nothing to do with my PhD progress. One examiner will be an expert who is external (from another university), and the other examiner will be internal to my university but totally unconnected to me. So my supervisors are there to prepare me so that I can pass the viva with these smart strangers. So I'm depending on them to make sure I'm ready. Thank goodness, I trust my supervisor to do that.

All of that said, I'm realizing that I'm way behind with my knowledge. Since my dissertation topic is outside of my previous interest areas, I'm having to make up a lot of ground on my own, and I don't have much outside direction for that. Mostly because I don't want to fess up about how much I don't know. So I have to figure out for myself what I should know and how I should learn it (as quickly as possible). That's also why I've been think of making up a mock orals list--to focus my cramming. It's hard to imagine I'll ever be an expert on this stuff . . .

Snippets and Advisors

I’ve started using a strategy that my husband recommended. At his work (as a computer programmer and researcher at the major search engine), every week they have to submit a report to their manager called “snippets.” It’s a simple report that contains a bullet list of what they’ve accomplished in the past week, a bullet list of what they’re planning to accomplish the next week, and maybe a paragraph describing their progress or new and interesting ideas. Right now, my snippets are in one document, and each week I add to the top of the list. (I keep them and all my freewriting in a program called MacJournal that can go full screen so I’m not distracted by other programs.) My husband claims that snippets can really help with efficiency, because you can recognize patterns of times you stall out or tasks that seem to take weeks. I have to confess that for the month of September, my snippet just seemed to repeat itself for 5 weeks in a row--I was getting very little accomplished. My husband also suggested that I use the snippets as an easy way to report in to my advisor so he can help guide and direct my studies, or at least be aware of how I’m progressing.

. . . which brings me to the question of the day: How have you guys set up your relationships with your advisors? So far, my advisors are very hands off. They’re more than happy to talk if I approach them, but don’t check in, nor have they set up expectations of when I’ll check in or what type of work I’ll have them look at (rough, rough drafts; chapter drafts; working ideas). And I don’t have a clear sense of the roles of my various committee members. I’d love to hear how your advisors work, and I’d love any advice on how to approach establishing expectations for the relationship.

Where am I?

Clearly, I've gone mad -- as in full-blown mad-hatters mad. The case, as it is, occurred to me today as I was trying to cram Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome, Henry James' Beast in the Jungle (my new favorite text), and William Hazlitt's essays into a day. I shouldn't complain. I know. I'm having fun. My plan for the week is to re-read Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space and David Harvey's Spaces of Hope. I've nailed down two of the three required areas for my orals: Radical Romantics and the Dominations of Space and Place. More to come ...

Finally!

I'm on! Rushing to read Wilde before class, but looking forward to contributing!

This week (and my exams)

Last week, I finished a bio of Queen Elizabeth I, and I'm starting the week with a lot of options and not a solid decision on what to read. I've got a few books stacked up: Spenser's Mother Hubbard's Tale, Anne Clifford's Diary, Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning, Alan Bray's The Friend, and Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. I think I may need a week where I get through a few things, so I may start with the Shakespeare and Spenser.

UMass requires two areas for the exam, although it required three before 2003. The areas must be clearly different, but can be related. I ended up choosing one exam around reading I wanted to do (Spenser and Shakespeare--I wanted to read all of the Faerie Queene* and had just TAed for a Shakespeare class), and the other around an advisor I really wanted on my committee (Jen Adams, a medievalist whose first book was on medieval chess--I ended up with late Medieval and early Renaissance women writers). Both areas combined had to have at least sixty works (both primary and secondary), and the written portion consisted of two essays, both together totaling less than 30 pages. My lists had a respectable amount of primary work, but ended up weighted toward secondary sources. I found that my tendency was to rely on others' readings rather than focusing on my own readings (as usual). (What, for you, is the rightful place or role of secondary sources? How do you keep them in that role practically?)

The exam itself was fine, but overwhelming. I left feeling like I'd done what I needed to do to pass, but that I had so much more work to do and that the exam hadn't gotten me any closer to a dissertation topic. I think I've finally recovered from it 10 months later. The exam did help me read a lot of material and think about some of the issues surrounding the works I read, but the dissertation seems like a whole new project, and it's hard to see now how my exam material will integrate. But I'm trying not to worry about it now. My goal for the moment is to read some background material on the period, get familiar with some major works in the field that people will assume I've read, and bulk up on primary sources. I'd like to be able to start writing my prospectus by September 09.

I do think making "exam lists" or some sort of categorization of sources will help me later on as I'm moving into writing chapters. They may even take the form of annotated bibliographies on particular works I'm dealing with or on arguments that I want to make.


*I highly recommend the Hackett edition that came out about a year ago. The books are published separately (except 3 and 4, which are together), there's a lot of white space on the smooth pages, and the notes are limited, clear, and unobtrusive. It made reading the whole thing a much more pleasant experience than other editions I've dabbled in.

This Week's Plan

I'm starting with some articles this week, which is great because it feels more productive to burn through some articles as opposed to slogging through a book. Most of the articles are philosophy-related. Once I get through a few of them, I'll take stock of where I am. But I think I'll be looking at Alan McKenzie's Certain, Lively Episodes: The Articulation of Passion in Eighteenth-Century Prose. I'm also reading Shaftsbury's The Moralists, which I had to print from the wonderful Eighteenth Century Collections Online, a resource without which I could not do my PhD while living so far from the British Library. Here's a nice portrait of the earl:

Once I get through The Moralists, I'll dive back into Michael Prince's Philosophical Dialogue in the British Enlightenment: Theology, Aesthetics, and the Novel. And then probably on to Michael McKeon's The Origins of the English Novel: 1600-1740 (and maybe some other McKeon as well, but his book will take me forever!). I plan to read some Habermas soon, too. And some of SafiaK's favorite theorists since she's much more up-to-speed on the theory beat. And I need to throw some primary sources into the mix, too. I guess I do have a bit of a plan . . .

I also plan, at some point soon, to make a mock orals list. My university doesn't require orals, but I think making the lists would help me focus and compartmentalize my work. Safiak's program requires three lists. Did you have three lists, Amstr?

What do do with the notes?

Amster, you raise the exact problem that I've been thinking about. So far, my method has been to write note in a spiral notebook and then use those notes for writing up actual text. The notes have included quotations as well as my responses to articles. For a lot of the articles/chapters, I've been writing immediate responses (usually half a page to two pages) in the spiral notebook. I think that system might work best for me since it's easy for me to always have my spiral notebook and a pen. Not always as easy for me to have the computer with me--even though it's a laptop. Plus, I prefer to read without hearing the hum of the computer. And if the computer is on, I will waste time checking to see the latest Palin/Obama/Biden/McCain snafu. Or I'll blog. My notebook system served me very well for the short section (only about 5000 words) I did in June.

However, I did initially plan on using EndNote, a program that allows you to enter all of your sources so that in-text footnotes (or endnotes) and Works Cited are subsequently a piece of cake. And, apparently, you can ask it to take a document in MLA style and automatically switch it to some other style. That could be a great time/headache saver. However, I downloaded a trial program, and after spending over a couple of hours over a couple of days trying to make it work, I gave up so I could focus on meeting my writing deadline for my supervisor. Have any of you worked with EndNote?

Like you, I don't have easy access to resources. Not only am I not near a library where I can check out sources for semesters at a time, I'm 2-3 hours from a decent research library. However, interlibrary loan allows me to keep books for 3-6 weeks at a time, and the UC libraries are part of my colleges loan system. But since it's not longer, the post-it thing doesn't really work for me (as it did in the MA program). So, I like the spiral notebooks because they are unified and low-tech, but I do need to figure out a plan for organizing/storing all of the articles I've copied and for storing bibliographic data. Maybe I'll give EndNote another try or check out BookEnds?

Whatever should one do with all those words?!?

I’ve recently realized that my past strategy for managing sources--piles of books and printed out articles marked with post-it-notes--probably isn’t going to work for a dissertation. Even if it would, our place is small enough and configured weirdly enough that I don’t actually have a place to put all the books and articles. And, since I’m living 3000 miles away from my university, I don’t get the benefit of being able to check out obscure secondary sources for years at a time.

In pondering my problem, I came up with nothing, so I surveyed a few dissertation-writing friends. One handwrites all her notes into notebooks and types up some quotes as she’s reading, then reviews her notes to plan her organization and writes. This friend actually knows someone who uses the post-it-note method, but reviews her sources and types up all her notes and quotes at once before she starts a chapter. Two other friends use DevonThink for the Mac and a bibliography program called Bookends. Evidently DevonThink can manage, search, and group numerous documents and document types, and has a simple word processing program so you can type notes directly into the program.

I’m not a big fan of index cards or writing-then-typing, so I’m planning to check out DevonThink (and then cough up the $150 for it). Before I commit, how are you all managing the masses of information necessary to writing a dissertation?