Epistles from Dissertania

Chapters

2010-03-06T12:07:00.000-08:00

Good question, Amstr. I'm going to ask around because I really don't know ... How long was the original paper, and how many chapters will be in the anthology?

Chapter-length = ?

2010-03-03T13:35:00.000-08:00

The panel I'm on at RSA is turning out to be a great thing. I've been invited to submit a more developed version of my conference paper into a book chapter for an anthology on maternity and early modern romance. It's due in December, so I'll have plenty of time. So how long is an essay in a book? Any idea what I should aim for?

Quicky quick

2010-02-15T13:57:00.001-08:00

I just can't beLieve I've been off line for so long. How are my fellow Dissertanians? I'm in the trenches of Orals preparations at the moment, and I'm teaching full time which really isn't such a good idea. For now, hello! I hope you are doing well. More soon!

Finding Books

2010-01-26T22:06:00.000-08:00

I have to say, public libraries ROCK! Living across the country from my campus, I thought I was going to have to pay a hefty visiting scholars fee to Stanford, drive 20 min. each way, navigate a college campus, only get books for three weeks, etc. etc. etc. But no. I get to order books through the public library Interlibrary Loan system and walk three blocks to pick them up.

How long has it been?

2010-01-25T21:28:00.000-08:00

GEW--I saw on your blog roll that it's been 3 whole months since any of us have written anything dissertation-related over here. So here's my update:

-Draft of RSA paper turned in to advisor (check)
-Prospectus approved by primary and secondary advisors (check)
-Contacted possible third reader (check)
-Dissertation draft totals 45 pages (check)
-Some research done for RSA paper (check)

I should specify that the dissertation draft is just a zero draft. I pick something I think I'll need to explore in the dissertation and write 2-4 pages a week (depending on the week). The idea is that eventually I'll have a chapter take shape and then focus more specifically on the argument for the chapter.

Here's my "to do" list for the next couple months:

-Revise, revise, revise, and polish my RSA paper (deadline: April 1)
-Do as much research as possible on and around paper topic to be prepared for panel and for diss. chapter writing.
-Nail down third reader and submit prospectus (somehow, three busy professors will magically sign the form without me in the state)
-Keep working on dissertation writing
-Finish reading Sidney's New Arcadia (I'm halfway through Book 3, near the point where there's a big blank spot; this book is a doozy. I'm taking good notes, but I do hope I can find some good detailed plot summaries to jog my memory about the insane plot twists and all the Greek character names.)
-Pick a diss. chapter to work on and start sketching out some preliminary arguments.

My current timeline (which I hope is generous) has me defending in about 3 years. As it happens I just ran across something on my Uni website that specifies that I have five years from advancement to candidacy to complete the dissertation. That puts my end date just inside the deadline. It's a good thing I waited to do my areas until after the kids were born. Otherwise I'd be up a crick.

What have you been up to?

Sanity Inducer

2009-10-01T15:15:00.000-07:00

I recently re-discovered the dissertation database (ProQuest at our library) where one can look at full and partial dissertations. Why, you ask? For inspiration. My husband's cure for dissertation blues was to read the worst dissertations that his department had passed in the last few years. He was pretty sure he could do better than that. Since I'm working on the chapter synopsis section of my prospectus, I found it really helpful to take a look at a bunch of different Tables of Contents to get an idea of what people actually cover in real dissertations that get people their degrees. I'm also keeping my eye out for some "worst of" dissertations to keep me going later.

Reply to Amstr by GEW (with an update)

2009-09-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the update, Amster. I, too, blew off the dissertation way too much during the summer. It's very hard not to do that, especially since the hubby and kids are on vacation, too. But in the future, when summer isn't followed by a sabbatical, I will need to really work.

As for my progress, I got a little bit done in August. Basically, I started working up some preliminary notes and arguments for what might turn out to be Chapter Four of the dissertation. Some of it is probably silly, but some of it will be productive.

And today I had my first meeting with my supervisor, which was great. We talked a bit about my notes (regarding Chapter Four), and we discussed my overall plan and the central driving questions of the thesis. We'll meet again tomorrow to talk more.

As for my studies, right I'm looking at primary sources and I'm review some Bakhtin. I think Bakhtin might turn out to be useful! But I'm pretty rusty on theory, so I've got a lot of work to do.

So, Amstr, are you enjoying working during the daytime? How are the September goals going? I really like the "Really see it" project, and I'll be working on that soon.

My Summer Vacation, by Me

2009-09-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Fall, my fellow dissertationers. What did you do over summer vacation?

My work stalled out for the last half of June and all of July. I had hoped to get a draft of my RSA conference paper done this summer, but alas, I have nothing. August ended up being a month of easing back into dissertation work. I read a modest amount, finished a paragraph-by-paragraph summary of Crane’s difficult introduction to Shakespeare’s Brain, got back in the rhythm of working, and prayed for September. Why the praying, you ask? Preschool.

Yesterday, both kids spent 2.5 hours with their teachers and other kids while I haunted a table at a Starbucks housed in a 70s strip mall, looking out over a shiny new Shell station. And I got a ton of writing done. I managed to re-write half of the methods section of my prospectus, and I toyed around with possible structures for my RSA paper. I actually came up with a clever idea for my conclusion, too. I hope I can keep up the momentum. Working during daylight hours is really pretty amazing.

So my plan for September:

-draft RSA paper

-read bunch of relevant articles and write Summary-Critiques of them

-revise my prospectus

-finish prospectus bibliography

-re-read FQ Book 3 (and relevant parts of Books 4 and 5)

-finish as much of Sidney’s New Arcadia as I possibly can

My other dissertation-y project is one I found here (scroll down to the "REALLY see it" section). I’m making a mock-up of my dissertation in a 3-ring binder. I’ll put in a title page, table of contents, sections for each chapter, etc. The hope is that it can help me work on small chunks without being overwhelmed by the dissertation as a whole. I may even cover it with “I heart Shakespeare” stickers, just for the encouragement.

Hope you’ve had good summers, and I’m eager for updates!

Pre-Vacation Organizing

2009-07-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

Okay. Well, I haven't gotten a lot of work done, but yesterday I DID take some of the advice from that last link. I pulled a little file cabinet out of the playroom closet. Emptied it of many strange things, put it next to the desk, moved the printer onto it (which had been taking up desk space), and cleaned the desk and the rest of the office/playroom. So now I just need some file folders, and I will use the cabinet for all of the scholarly articles I have in giant piles. And the desk is ready for work when I get back, which is good because I won't get back until the middle of August, and I'll have about 2.5 weeks to crank out a bunch of work before I go back to Wales in September.

Anybody want to go with me to Wales in September? I think I'm going to fly out around the 3rd, get back around the 12th.

:)

Post-Vacation Working

2009-07-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

I'm definitely having trouble getting back in the groove after a couple weeks of vacation. I've done very little since I turned in my prospectus draft, and I have a lot I want to accomplish this summer. I ran across these articles and thought I'd pass them along:

How to Re-start Your Dissertation after a Vacation, Part I

How to Re-start Your Dissertation after a Vacation, Part II

I'm supposed to be writing a full draft of my conference paper this summer, but it's been years since I wrote a paper (specifically 4.5 years, excluding area exams). I'm having trouble getting started. Any suggestions? Any surefire strategies you use?

Summer Madness

2009-07-03T13:29:00.000-07:00

Hey folks. Hope to catch up soon, but I've been crazy busy moving into a new apartment working on a story and my orals lists. Also, check out the site which is keeping me busy building away: shoecellar.com Hopefully, I'll be resurfacing soon-ly!

Scraps

2009-06-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks for sending the prospectus to me, Amstr! Everything has been crazy with parties, family visits, etc., so I haven't read it yet. I'll read it when I get back from the cruise. I'm eager to read it because I had a just a couple of hours on Wednesday to do a bit of diss work, and I found myself re-thinking the chapter organization. I'll be running my thoughts by my fellow Dissertanians when we get back from the cruise!

Back soon . . .

News (used to be a plural)

2009-06-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

News item #1: My panel got accepted to the RSA conference! Yay! Now I just have to convince my parents or brothers or close friends to travel with us to help out with child care. Oh, and write a paper.

News item #2: I turned in my prospectus draft. And boy, is it a draft. No citations. Bracketed notes to myself all over the place about what I still need to write. Each "chapter" section in a different form and style. But it's turned in. My next step is to put together a working bibliography by the end of the month.

News item #3: Next up, working on writing the RSA conference paper, which will get me started on the reading and research for my Faerie Queene chapter. I'd love to have a solid draft by the end of the sumer.

How's the summer shaping up for you?

Yet again . . .

2009-05-26T23:05:00.000-07:00

I had an "I really, really feel like quitting" week last week, and tonight, my ideas for my prospectus (and its theoretical basis) came together quite nicely--at least in my head. I hope sleeping on it makes it even better.

Hope you two are having good endings to good semesters.

One step closer to Italy

2009-05-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

I found out today that my paper proposal for RSA 2010 was accepted to the panel "Maternity and Renaissance Romance Narratives." Now I have to whittle down my 342 word abstract to 150 words and submit it directly to RSA. Evidently, RSA reviews our panel and gives a thumbs up or thumbs down on the entire thing. I'll likely hear back over the summer.

I Heart Cognitive Theory

2009-05-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading the introduction to Mary Thomas Crane’s Shakespeare’s Brain, and I love, love, love cognitive theory. It’s the first theory that feels right, or makes sense, or works in concert with the ways that I think, or however you want to say it. She does the complicated work of justifying the use of cognitive science as a means for describing/interpreting literature, situates it among all the big hitters--Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, Lacan, and others--and proposes specific ways to apply cognitive theory to literature. Here’s a shout out to Dr. Rubba for exposing me to linguistic analysis of literature in general, and cognitive theory in particular. (And for telling me that I should go get a PhD.)

I had a little bit of confirmation that I'm doing the right thing by working on a PhD: I stayed up reading literary theory until 1am BECAUSE I WANTED TO! I was so enthralled, I couldn't put it down.

What crazy things have you done that show you have that crazy-making, magical, mystical, brainiac relationship with your PhD subject?

2009-04-30T08:51:00.000-07:00

GEW, I'm so happy for you! Convincing and original is really impressive. Can I have some of that?! Seriously though, you must feel very good about your work. I look forward to hearing more about it.

Sorry I didn't get back to your FB wall post. The conference went well, and it turned out to be an unexpectedly edifying experience. I look forward to attending more conferences.

The answer to the question regarding theory is unfortunately complex. I have a lot to think about this summer, and I hope I work hard at that thinking rather than indulging in the escapism I am longing for! I guess Foucault has had the biggest impact on me in terms of heuristic devices, but that has political implications and complications. I'm not sure what to do about it yet. Also, F. Jameson and Bourdieau have left deep impressions as well. More on that later.

Amstr, good call! I do remember the Summary/Analysis responses, and I have not tried it. I will. I think it would be incredibly helpful, and it's precisely the much-needed skill I may be lacking right now. I'm glad you called that one out.

Okay, good luck everyone!

Cloud Nine

2009-04-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

I got a response from my supervisor (already!) about the 5,000 words that I sent to her, and she was very affirming. In fact, she said, "Overall, I thought this was very good indeed and not rough at all. You really are starting to get to grips with this and shape an argument which is convincing and original."

Yay. Yay. Yay. I am so excited and motivated.

Theory

2009-04-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

Amstr, Is your dissertation going to be theory-heavy? Is there a certain theorist that's driving your work?

SafiaK, I'm guessing your paper will be fairly theory-heavy. In your studies over the past couple of years, what has been your favorite theory/theorist? The most interesting and the most useful for opening a text? is there a certain theorist whose work you'll rely on in your diss?

Summary-Responses

2009-04-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

GEW, I know you took Keesey's class when I did. Did you, SafiaK? Do you remember all those summary-responses we had to write? That exercise made me a much faster at reading and assessing articles. I'm guessing that it would do me well to re-develop that skill, so I'm starting to write Summary-Responses for the articles I'm reading in connection with my dissertation. Have you tried this? Do you think it will be ultimately helpful?

It's in the Mail!

2009-04-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

I sent the pages. They needed more proofreading, and I attached a full page of explanations, caveats, apologies, and disclaimers. But it's off. I was ready to stop. I know I should have proofread it again, but it's a draft, and I have tons of prep and papers to grade, and I need to get back to my real job. I think--I hope--the supervisor will be fine with that.

Now I'm going to eat a peanut butter cookie before I go to bed and read a few pages of Breaking Dawn, the last in the Twilight series. Has anyone else read these books? The gender dynamics (along with much of the writing itself) are killing me. At this point, I'm just chugging along so I can see how it all ends, but I'm kind of annoyed at having to go through 700 more pages of the exact same plot moves and character conversations in order to get there. Why didn't I write some bestselling vampire books?

Working during the day

2009-04-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

I got to work for 2 hours at Starbucks this afternoon. What a difference the day makes! I was so much more alert, motivated, and quick in my work. This evening, it's way harder to get started. I have a feeling my dissertation life will change drastically come September.

Almost . . . there . . . Stay on Target! Stay on Target!

2009-04-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

I have the 5000 words for my supervisor. I've been planning to e-mail the work tomorrow, and I might make it. I've spent the last hour or so reading over the pages, and I need to make changes, and they will take at least two hours to do, if not more. It's about 19 pages, and I've learned a lot from writing them. The 19 pages are not unified, and they skip some parts. But there are a couple of pages in the middle that might be important. Either way, I think it will help me to have these things on paper, and I know it has helped me to write them. Theoretically, they could serve as part of Chapter One, but I think it's not really focused enough for a chapter. And I would have a lot more to add. It has some sections that are blank because I just skipped over them because I don't know enough yet. And there are plenty of parts about which, if I were grading the pages, I would say, "How does this fit in? What does this have to do with the main point?" or "What is the main point?" Much of the work is very contextual, and I haven't tied it all together very well. But, there it is. On the page.

Now, I think it's time to get more into primary texts so that I can get a better sense of how they actually fit into this context I've been spending so much time on.

But I do enjoy it. I can't wait for summer so that I can leave teaching behind for a little while--again. I love teaching my Brit lit class, but as for the others--not so much right now. I much prefer working on the research/writing of this dissertation.

I hope my supervisor is kind. It's very hard to send this out without a long list of caveats, disclaimers, and apologies.

An "interesting" proposal

2009-04-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

I sent my paper proposal in last night, praying that I'd proofread it enough times to catch all my silly errors. This morning, I heard back from the professor making the decisions thanking me for my "interesting proposal." I really hope that's interesting-as-in-compelling and not "interesting [eyebrows raised, eyes ready to roll]."

Now I'm trying to plow through a ton of reading, and I'm starting to draft my prospectus. This weekend begins my commitment to Saturday work days. I'm hoping to start with 2 hours on Saturday afternoon, two times a month. Next week, I also get to go fill out preschool packets for the kids--I'm looking forward to the extra work time during the day.

My favorite new work tool: The Moleskine ruled reporter's notebook. In it I'm writing my list of small achievable goals for each day and any notes-to-self I need to keep track of. It's a bit pathetic how happy it makes me. (It kind of reminds me of impassioned conversations about grading pens.)

SafiaK, how did the conference go? GEW, how goes the writing? I'm eager for updates when you come up for air!

Wall of Shame contribution

2009-04-13T22:05:00.000-07:00

Have a near-complete working draft of my prospectus by June 1.

My goal really is to have the prospectus in such a state that I can leave it so I can start on a chapter and come back to mess with it later if I need to.

Safia K's Progress

2009-04-13T14:35:00.001-07:00

1 / 100000 words. 0% done!

The Dark Night of the Scholar

2009-04-10T14:39:00.000-07:00

I figured out this week that the times I feel most like quitting are the times that things are likely coming together. Wednesday night I was completely overwhelmed by the idea of proposing a conference paper. I was struggling with the format, feeling like my ideas were too simple, feeling like I’d never know the Faerie Queene well enough to write about it, etc. etc. etc. Then I did what always worked for me in classes: I talked about it (always the verbal processor). I actually started by telling my husband all the reasons I thought I should probably quit working on my PhD, and that turned into telling him my ideas, and that turned into feeling more confident and having a good outline for my conference paper proposal.

I’ve got a draft of my proposal (really an abstract, though I spent half an hour trying to figure out the difference between the two) that I’m sending off to my advisor tonight. I send in the actual proposal before April 18, and should hear back by May 2. This would be my first national conference, and I feel really lucky that my family is willing to be dragged along to Italy if I get in. Mostly, it feels good to know that other people are interested in questions I’m working on, and it doesn’t hurt that the conference paper would likely become a part of a chapter (or be expanded into a chapter). For all this cheeriness, though, I’m sure I’ll spend much of the next weeks anxious that my ideas and writing just aren’t good enough. Tonight, however, I think I’ll celebrate with beer and chocolate.

Wall of Shame Post

2009-04-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

I think this is my first Wall of Shame Item:

Finish 5000-word piece by April 18th for my supervisor.

It must be done.

Coming Up for Air

2009-03-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

Congratulations on getting that check-in email out, Amstr! I totally relate to the neat and pretty packaging dilemma; it contributes more to delays that I usually remember. Hurray for free-writing! Lately, I've taken to sitting in the metaphorical seat of one of my students to get my own ass in gear when it comes to putting words on a page. I really like what you said about starting again with blank page instead of tinkering with old ones. I still have my conference paper on my wall of shame because I've been tinkering too long, and the count down is on. Just days before the conference, and I'm wondering "how long should this be?" And I should be asking you guys, how long should it be? I know, 8-10 pages. Argh.

I loved your motivation list too. Although I'm a ways away from the dissertation, here's my list of why I'm gonna finish this PhD:

I'm been wanting to do this forEver.
I'll be fulfilling a dream.
I love the idea of being "Dr. B!"
It opens up possibilities for work and research.
I can feel responsible without feeling trapped in a "quiet life of desperation."
Small liberal arts college here I come! (We hope).
It motivates me to keep questioning, learning, and reaching further shores of understanding ... and more questioning (myself, the world, others, etc.).
All this constant exposure to new ideas makes me feel more alive.
It helps me feel connected to a world of text and art in a way that reminds me that I don't just want but need to discard convention (including that of academia! ;)).

I hope you're getting more done GEW. It was great to chat the other day, and thanks for the input and insights. I've got all kinds of new ideas on the subject of science as a result -- and a much better understanding. Gads, to work with me. I'll be able to check in more often over the next couple of months, and I'll be adding much to my wall of shame. (Including the non-PhD driven idea for that book I was talking about in December).

Good luck everyone!

More Prospectusing (and some wall of shame contributions)

2009-03-20T21:44:00.001-07:00

I finally, finally sent my March check-in email to my advisor. It was only three days later than my goal due date, but it sure was stressing me out. It wasn't that I didn't have much to report--I've actually accomplished a lot in the time I've had the past month. It was that I want everything to be neatly packaged and pretty when I send it. (I'm not one to enjoy inviting someone to come in and look at my messy closet.) I got stressed out most by my prospectus progress section.

Last month, I got confirmation of prospectus stuff from the advisor: yes, the prospectus should be useful to me; no, it shouldn't take up more time than is valuable; it will probably not be a complete map of where the dissertation will go; it might, for me, include the basic questions I'm asking, the texts I'm planning to include (maybe even specific scene references), and my theoretical/critical approach (perhaps through what secondary sources I've found useful in my work so far); and it shouldn't probably be more than 8-10 pages.

Easier said than done.

I had hoped to send a rough outline as a starting point for drafting the prospectus, and it ended up looking rather sickly. I finally ended up freewriting "this is what I want to say to you about my prospectus," and I ended up with a decent description of what I've been thinking.* On a week when I've taken two work nights off and felt rather unmotivated to work the other nights, I'm counting the sent email as a triumph.

On the horizon:

1) reading Sidney's New Arcadia (I can't say I'm excited for the expanded version of the already long Old Arcadia, and though Sidney's thigh-wound infection death at age 31 is tragic, I'm not-so-secretly glad that he couldn't finish New)

2) finishing Helen Hackett's Women and Romance Fiction in the English Renaissance

3) taking notes on lots of things (I've had trouble getting in the groove with notetaking--GEW, I'd love to hear more about how notetaking/responding worked for your first writing project)

4) writing an abstract to submit for the "Maternity and Romance Narratives in the Renaissance" session for RSA 2010 (in Venice, Italy). deadline: mid-April. draft deadline: end of the month. I think I'm writing on FQ.

5) continuing to explore my theoretical/critical approach. My current strategy is writing a conversation between me and my advisor. Let me tell you, FakeAdvisor is an excellent Socratic questioner. Any suggestions on how to develop this section of my prospectus?

6) unpack the book boxes that are still piled in the bedroom--I need to uncover the Spenser Encyclopedia, the essay collection Dissing Elizabeth, Mary Thomas Crane's Shakespeare's Brain, and Faerie Queene.

*This exercise has been a good reminder that often I need to refine my thinking through multiple drafts, and not just by tinkering with old drafts, but by actually starting again with a blank page.

The Little Things

2009-03-17T10:47:00.000-07:00

I love your list Amstr. I'll think about mine. I'm pretty sure it will be almost the same as yours, so I might just plagiarize yours.

In other news, I read an article on Sunday. Woohoo! Pitiful, I know. But it felt great to me.

Motivation

2009-03-06T12:56:00.000-08:00

I'm given to bursts of motivation and much time when I'm not motivated at all to work on my dissertation. All the dissertation-writing books, common sense, and past dissertation writers I've known say that in order to finish, one must be consistently motivated. For a while I've had my "write first" rule in place, along with my "write for 15 minutes a day" rule. I'm getting better at the 15 minutes a day, but if I don't manage to write at the beginning of naptime (my first opportunity), I often get stalled until it's almost time for bed--many hours of work time spent on things other than work.

So here's my new plan. I have my Google Calendar email me twice a day (right before my work times should start) with an 'event' that is really a list of reasons I want to work on and finish my dissertation. So far it seems to be helping. I've been more productive this week than I have in a while. Of course, the test will be if it's still working in a few months.

Here's my list:

-I'll be following my vocation.

-I'll feel as if I've accomplished something important.

-I won't be a quitter.

-I'll learn a ton and be an expert in my field.

-I'll be proud of writing a book-length work.

-I'll be able to have an idea of how to move ahead with writing--either revising the dissertation or doing other writing.

-I'll be qualified to get a job teaching at a small liberal arts college. [my dream job]

-I'll have a degree that makes me even more employable, if I needed or wanted to be employed. [This one is certainly arguable, but a PhD would at least give me a higher pay rate at most jobs I'd want.]

-I'll have a chance every day to do something that I love to do (that's not directly related to kids). [currently, my most motivating reason]

-I'll be able to really tell my kids that dedication and hard work can pay off.

-No one can ever take a PhD away from me. [OK, there might be someone, but it's just not very likely.]

-I'll be fulfilling a dream.

-I'll be able to write "Dr." in front of my name or "PhD" behind it. And even both at once, if I'm feeling like flouting convention.

What's your list?

How on Earth?

2009-03-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

Dude. How am I ever going to get this done? Must I stop sleeping or something? Or, God forbid, give up television? I am not getting anything done.

My Progress and Questions for Safiak

2009-02-23T10:01:00.000-08:00

So, I had started feeling a bit panicked about my lack of progress. Mostly, I was nervous about how distant I was feeling from my topic, and I was starting to worry that I'd have a hard time starting the engines again or that I would have lost a lot of ground (sorry for the mixed metaphors).

But yesterday, I spent a couple of hours writing and editing, and I wasn't quite as rusty as I thought. I think a lot of my ideas and some of my research is still in my brain. Yes, I will have to go back over sources and re-read, but I've only fallen one of two steps back. This experience does make me realize that I need to do more note-taking, free-writing after each article/chapter that I read. I did that for the first piece I wrote last June, and it really helped. This fall, I was reading a lot of books, and I think I was overwhelmed by all of the info, so I didn't take many notes. Well, to clarify, I wrote down a lot of quotations, but I didn't write much about my own reactions to the texts and quotations. I need to get back to doing that since those notes can really turn into valuable text.

But so yesterday I wrote about 1000 words and was very happy. They aren't all good words, and they are a bit quote heavy, but it's progress.

So, SafiaK, how are things going with all of your deadlines? How is the conference stuff shaping up? What's the title of your paper?

Prospectus, Here I Come!

2009-02-18T13:26:00.000-08:00

I've been puzzling over my dissertation topic lately, and I've been trying to write through possibilities and ideas I've got rumbling around in my head. I think I finally got to something close to what I want to do (even though it needs a clearer focus and the wording needs to be much, much more precise). Here's an excerpt from my freewriting today:

In thinking about a ‘so what?’ I need to remember my audience. I’m primarily writing for Renaissance scholars, and maybe for others with literary interests and training. My ‘so what’ doesn’t have to make the work totally relevant to today’s youth, for instance. I don’t have to make those kinds of stretches. I think my ‘so what’ will actually show up in response to other works. For instance, “I’m considering the topic of women’s authority because I want to show that women had special authorities that worked synergistically to enable the category of women rulers so that people can understand that female autonomy was not fully limited nor defined by men, but exceeded the social definitions.” That actually sounds pretty good (even though it's not what I'm really trying to say). I think I’m at my best in responding to others or situating my work in a context (once I find what that context is). I do think I’ll have a section called “The Christian Woman,” “The Political Woman,” “The Domestic Woman.” I’ll look at how social networks, and controlling those social networks enabled women to have a particularized power/authority/autonomy that took her out of the prescribed role as functioning only in the non-public sphere. And how the power granted in each particular case could translate through metaphors into the other spheres, culminating in the image of Elizabeth as “Mother of England, Christian Prince.”

Good Luck, SafiaK! (and a not so surprising reflection on reading)

2009-02-11T21:08:00.001-08:00

SafiaK, good luck with all those upcoming deadlines. I imagine you feverishly working on your conference paper and application. You'll do fabulously.

I rediscovered again last night (I rediscover this often) that I really, really love to read. I'm trying to blaze through Sidney's Old Arcadia, and it's difficult to read quickly because it's just so fascinating. When I'm not actually reading and not actually writing, I forget how much I love it. I think I may institute a 5-pages-a-day reading quota (along with my 15-min.-a-day writing quota) just to keep the activity of scholarship consistent, to remind myself daily how much I (can) love what I do. (And maybe, just possibly, to keep the fear at bay.)

Dear Supervisor

2009-02-11T11:16:00.000-08:00

Here is part of the message I just sent to my supervisor. I copied it here to share with you:

Dear Supervisor,

I’ve been intimidated by this next bit of writing I need to do, and I’m afraid I’m going to writing something that’s not very good and that I’ll embarrass myself and that you’ll think I’m stupid. It might be of tremendous help to me if you could give me “permission” to write something that might not be very good—just so I can get some things on paper—and if you could reassure me that you’ll try not to think I’m stupid. I keep feeling as if I need to read more, to know more, before I write, but that feeling might go on for ever, so I need to just do it. This means I will certainly have holes in my knowledge base.

Would that be okay? If I give you something that might be mediocre or even bad? Then I can revise and move forward as necessary.

Sincerely,
Good (Enough) Student

Getting Rolling.

2009-02-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

Getting back in the groove of dissertation work is slow and daunting. I finally made a list of things I must do if I plan to finish, and things I must do before June to get my prospectus done.

My question(s) of the week: How did you know your prospectus was done? How did you know you were ready to start your first chapter? How much "pre-work" had you done before you started that first chapter? What form did your prospectus take?

As far as this week goes, I'm diving in to Sidney's Old Arcadia (which I'm hoping to blaze through), working more on taking notes (I think I have DevonTHINK and Bookends up and running), and gearing up for my February check in.

Getting Back in Gear

2009-01-29T13:28:00.000-08:00

Hope all is well with everyone. I'm not sure if it's reassuring or just plain hilarious that we all seemed to stall around the same time. I'm back in New York and trying to get a head start on my reading. As a junior member of the club (still working on my orals and all), my list of impending shame items are as follows:

Register for the conference at which I'm supposed to present in March (by Monday).
Write the conference paper (by 2/15)!
Reserve a room by 3/1!
Apply for two fellowships: One for the conference (by 2/1) and one for the Center for Politics and Culture (by 2/15).
Finish the INCL I took this semester by 3/1.
Finish compiling two of my three orals lists by 6/1.

I'm sure there's more, but I'll have to wait on it! Right now, I've got two books and about 500 pages of secondary texts to read by next week! Ack! Shriek! Well, not so bad!!!!

Yes, invite your friend Amstr! I was thinking about inviting a former Cal Poly comrade who is working on the last stages of his dissertation right now. Whad'ya think? ;)

Update in Brief

2009-01-23T22:20:00.000-08:00

Very Brief: Finished a book this week, read two articles, wrote 500 words, and started back teaching full time. Soon, I'll give a more detailed update, ask some questions, and post a to do list. On another note, I just watched the Lost premiere, brutha!

Adding more blood, sweat, and tears to the mix? (someone else's)

2009-01-23T17:24:00.000-08:00

Hi fellow scholars,

I've another friend who's doing her dissertation work from a distance--Oregon to Cornell. She's an awesome medievalist and is starting her first chapter. (And has a kindergartener to boot.)

Mind if I send her an invite?

So is EVERYONE stalled?

2009-01-17T23:48:00.000-08:00

I sure am. Sheesh.

I'm running out of excuses for not working. I got my fancy new laptop, I've got demos of organization and bibliography programs, I've got more than enough books to read. But, I like to think, I still have unpacking to do, I don't have my computer totally set up yet, and I still need to get the kids settled into a routine after all the traveling and moving.

So in the spirit of avoiding public embarrassment as motivation, here are my Shame contributions: 1) email advisor by 12:01am Tuesday (I skipped my December check in), and 2) start working Monday night, no excuses or movie watching.

My goals for next week:

-choose a bibliography program and enter book information from the fall

-type up notes from one book

-start reading Sidney's Old Arcadia

What are you guys up to?

Stalled

2008-12-11T16:19:00.001-08:00

I have stalled to such an extreme degree that I have just stopped. I think I might have to pick up again after the new year (since we're leaving town in a few days and won't be back until then). I hope to read a few related things between now and then to keep the ideas alive and, perhaps, developing.

OMG

2008-12-07T17:44:00.000-08:00

I just realized I lost a month.

This IS Hard.

2008-12-07T17:37:00.000-08:00

I wish I had some words of wisdom to drop into the pool, but I'm stuck. In fact, I'm crashing. My brain is suddenly empty; I've never read a thing in my life; I have no idea what I am doing here. Seriously. I have to write a paper, and I am drawing a blank. I keep trying to go back to the days when I'd think of a topic and begin exploring it. I have no idea how I did that. In fact, looking over essays I wrote just a couple of months ago, I'm perplexed. I don't recognize any of the ideas. I'm beginning to panic. I think this is a block, and I'm not sure I've ever experienced a real-life, god-forsaken block. I'm in trouble. I will think about what I would say to you, GEW, and hopefully I'll come up with something over the next day or two. Ack!

This is Hard.

2008-12-04T10:42:00.000-08:00

So. I need to submit some pages to my advisor in January. I want to get it done at least a week before I start teaching again. I'd REALLY like to have a draft done by the end of next week, so that I can just tinker over the holidays, adding stuff, fixing footnotes and filling in references.

But here's the rub. Suddenly, I feel as if I know nothing. Or, at least, that I have read nothing.

Suggestions about how to slog forward?

Underwater

2008-12-03T22:14:00.000-08:00

We traveled for Thanksgiving. Then we all got sick. Then on the day we were heading home we got notice that the owner of our rental wants it back by Jan. 3. So now I'm still sick and still unpacking from the trip and househunting. The good news is that after a couple days of panic, the househunting is going well, and I should be able to get at least a little work done before the next holidays. Until moving interrupts it.

Welcome, Kevin! Good to see you last week, GEW. And hope you had a great break SafiaK.

Learning to be Advised

2008-11-28T21:34:00.000-08:00

Yet again, I approached contacting my advisor with trepidation. Yet again, he had great wisdom and encouragement. My dissertation actually seems to be taking form, instead of looking like alphabet soup.

I had one of those insight moments last night where I realized that the work I've been doing fits in with the work I did for my areas, particularly my focus on female authority. Instead of looking at a broad range of female authorship and authority, I'm focusing on motherhood and queenship and how the two intertwine. The two preliminary topic proposals--one on QEI as "mother," the other on Anne Clifford's relationships with her mother and with her daughter--probably connect in some way and give me a good starting point. (This is Anne to the left.)

The big question I asked my advisor was how to approach non-literary texts from a literary perspective. He said that training as a literary scholar will naturally lead to literary questions (of genre, rhetoric, voice, (self-)representation, constructions of identity and authority, audience, etc.), but that my question now should really be how construct my work so that literary and non-literary texts interact. He cautioned against focusing solely on non-literary works (as he did; it makes the job market more difficult because one might be seen as too non-literary [this may be particularly true in Ren studies]), and encouraged me to focus on mother-queen images in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Sidney (again, making my areas work helpful), using non-literary texts to support and broaden my arguments.

In a week where I've felt more like quitting than like plugging along, this advisor response was a much needed and positive motivator. How did I manage to luck into the most awesome advisor (for me) ever?

On a sort of related note: I just found out that Anne Clifford had memorial for Edmund Spenser put up in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. Small world, that Renaissance aristocracy.
“HEARE LYES (EXPECTING THE SECOND COMMINGE OF OUR SAVIOVR CHRIST JESUS) THE BODY OF EDMOND SPENCER THE PRINCE OF POETS IN HIS TYME WHOSE DIVINE SPIRRIT NEEDS NOE OTHIR WITNESSE THEN THE WORKS WHICH HE LEFT BEHINDE HIM. HE WAS BORNE IN LONDON IN THE YEARE 1553 AND DIED IN THE YEARE 1598. Restored by private subscription 1778”.

Nota Bene

2008-11-20T14:47:00.000-08:00

Well, I've downloaded the trial version of Nota Bene and will be working with it for the next few weeks to see what I think. It sounds great, but I must admit that I balk at the price and at the learning curve involved in using it. I tend to think, "Who needs it?" But then I realize that I might be underestimating the task ahead. But didn't people do dissertations for decades without even having a computer? Do I really need to spend such money to keep myself organized? Perhaps I do. I'm not sure. Do my fellow dissertanians have any of this ambivalence?

In truth, the most important part of the program might be its ability to change the format/style of a doc. This could be VERY helpful since I will be writing my thesis in MHRA style but might want to submit portions of it for publication in MLA style. Does that sound presumptuous?

Snippets (and addition?)

2008-11-17T21:46:00.000-08:00

I’m still reading Elizabeth’s collected works. My goal is to be 3/4 of the way through this week, and to have a mini-topic proposal for my advisor by Friday. List of Shame addition: contact advisor by a week from today.

My newest strategy is to be okay with reading in small chunks. I tend to want a couple hours at a time to really get into the reading, but I don’t often have that much uninterrupted time. My new motto is: do not fear tiny amounts of work.

Question: I wondered what you guys would think of inviting another blog author in. GEW, you've seen Kevin's postings on UMass Disserters. He's aiming to finish the diss this spring, I think, and is a Ren. guy, but I think he'd be interested in joining in on some not-necessarily-topic-specific conversations (and our UMass blog is getting a slow start). What do you think?

Managing Notes, etc.

2008-11-16T12:38:00.000-08:00

Amstr, I've been following the conversation on UMass Disserters about DevonThink and Bookends. Any recommendations for PC users such as moi?

Met With Supervisor!

2008-11-16T11:53:00.000-08:00

So! I had a great week in Wales (I'm in London today and fly home tomorrow!). I met with my primary supervisor for quite a while on Wednesday (lunch, office time, book launch, dinner) and then for a couple of hours on Friday. Also, I was in theory modules Thursday and Friday. The theory modules were mostly review, but there was a great session on Semiotics and a great session on text editing. It was worthwhile just to be with some other PhD students and do some theory review.

My primary supervisor and I talked mostly about thesis (dissertation) direction and chapter organization, both of which seem to depend on whether I stay narrow (one author) or go more broad in the first half of the project and then focus in on Haywood in the second half. Some of my contextual research has been interesting, and it's tempting to include it in a way that would broaden the thesis, but for now I think I'm going to assume that it will stay narrow--focused on Haywood. That could change, I guess, when I start writing the contextual stuff in question, but we'll see. The chapter divisions will depend on these same issues.

I also talked to her about how my writing strategies are unfolding. It seems to me that I'm tending to lean in the direction of the following process:

read and research for a chapter
make an outline for a chapter
draft a skeleton chapter (about 1/3 the length of final draft)
repeat process for other chapters
revisit skeleton chapters to flesh them out

This strategy has its weaknesses, the primary one being that I'll have to do each chapter at least twice, and there may be a fair amount of time between the drafts, and I could forget stuff or misplace sources. It also has strengths: I get a chance to see how the arguments shape up on paper, and perhaps I'll see which ones aren't working so well. I get important citations on paper, and I start integrating them. I'll see where the holes are. I won't have to store a whole chapter's worth of thoughts in my head or wait until I've done so in order to start writing. I'll have more knowledge when I revisit the chapters, so I can strengthen them.

I'm sure there are other strengths and weaknesses to such a process; I just hope the former will outweigh the weaker. Regardless, I just think that's how it's going to unfold.

I spoke to my secondary supervisor for about an hour-and-a-half. I think she was a little out of sorts that she and I didn't have more time to talk, but I hadn't scheduled that because I really didn't know if I was supposed to involve her at this point or not. The good news is that she is very interested in my project because I don't think she gets many advisees who share her philosophical bent. I think she's going to be very helpful. I told her that I was worried that I'll never know enough about philosophy to be an "expert" on any part of it, but she reminded me that my examiners will be English faculty not philosophy faculty, so I should be okay. Either way, she's a good measuring stick for me. If I can get past her, I think I can get past anyone (this notion was increased when I found out that she's kind of a hard "grader").

We didn't talk too much about conferences. My supervisor thinks I probably will be ready in about a year or so. I agree with her. I'm sure I could put something together before that if I really wanted to, but if I want to stay focused on the dissertation itself, some of that material should be conference-ready for next year. Each year, there is a grad student conference in Gregynog, Wales (see the photo?), and perhaps I will try to time a visit with that conference. I'll also keep my eye out for other conferences not too far from home. Plus, I'm not sure the husband or the kids will want me to go anywhere else for a while!

My next step is to write the skeleton version of Chapter One. I will try to get that done (or at least 5,000 words of it) by mid-January. I'd better get crackin'! But there's a hitch: I have to write my diss in MHRA style, which I haven't learned yet and which I didn't do for the previous writing submission. But for this one, I'd like to do it correctly. I don't want to get to the end and have to revise the formatting of 300 pages. Ack!

I've had a great week, but other than chatting with my advisors, I didn't get a lot of work done. I've watched TV in my hotel rooms and read novels on planes and trains. I am bad! I've treated it like a vacation, which it sort of is. But when I get home (tomorrow!) after I spend a couple of days inhaling the children, I'll get to work. It will be tough because of all of the holidays, but I tend to work faster when I'm writing than when I'm reading, so I'm optimistic!

BTW, Safiak, I came across John Clare's name at least twice this week!

Write or Die!

2008-11-13T13:20:00.000-08:00

Another dissertation-writing friend passed this link along: Write or Die! You type in either a word count or a time required or both, and then you can set the settings of the program's responses to Gentle, Evil, Strict, etc. I did a test drive of 100 words, and after I finished, it played a fanfare. Sad to say, it felt great! and all I did was type nonsense. I suppose failing would produce something nearer the rack. It may come in handy when I'm stuck and just need to get words on paper (or screen).

Falling down and getting back up

2008-11-11T21:48:00.001-08:00

I should know myself better. The second I have a goal that I'm pretty sure is too lofty, I freeze up and all my plans go down the crapper. My ambitious (for me) reading plan this last week proved to be one of those too lofty goals. I have made some progress, but not near as much as I'd like. And then I just kind of stopped reading. After the crash-and-burn, and a difficult weekend with the kids (made worse by the rain), we decided we needed a break. Luckily, my parents and brother had yesterday and today off, so we made a last minute trip to Carmel Valley. It was heavenly, and now I'm psyching myself up for a week of not-so-lofty goals, but regular and consistent work.

I'm moving back and forth between the collection of Elizabeth I's writing (it's chronological, and I'm currently reading speeches made around her ascension) and sections in Women in Early Modern England. I'll also probably squeeze in The Countess of Lincoln's Nursery (a treatise on breastfeeding) when I get bored of Elizabeth.

Here's to good progress, good books, and good wine.

In PhD Town!

2008-11-10T14:09:00.000-08:00

Not many posts lately because first I was busy with in-laws, and then I was busy packing, and then I was busy traveling, the latter of which went quite smoothly! Now, I'm in PhD town. Tomorrow, I need to go by the Dean's Office to sign a form for the theory module I'll be attending Thursday and Friday. Then, I think I'll go to the library, and read some poems by A. Pope, among others. Oh, I have a GREAT article to read that's called, "Neoplatonism, Ficino, and the Problem of Sex." I'm eager to get to THAT one.

Tomorrow, I'm on my own, then I'll spend Wed. afternoon with my supervisor. Thurs and Fri, I'll be at the module, and Saturday afternoon, I take the train back to London-town! It goes quickly. But I hear little Roo is sad, and that makes me sad, so I'll be glad to see the kiddie-poos again!

But today, I enjoyed a late lunch at my favorite charcuterie/delicatessen. I started with a warm duck salad (little medallions of duck in greens with a great balsamic), then followed it with some kind of stew that had a chicken thigh, various cured meats, chick peas, carrots--it was amazing! And I got a glass of French Sauvignon and a cheese plate that came with the most amazing date-orange chutney. All for just 15 quid! Granted, that's an expensive lunch, but I knew with that lunch I wouldn't need dinner. So I stocked up my hotel room with two baguettes, some Beaufort cheese, a bag of apples, some peach-almond chutney, some Spanish wine, some dark chocolate, and some port. With free breakfasts, late lunches, and my hotel room stash, I won't be needing dinners! In the long run, that should save me some $$$.

I'll let you know how things go with my supervisor!

Shuffling Along

2008-11-03T22:30:00.000-08:00

So my update for this week: I'm hoping to dig in to Elizabeth I's writings. I'd love to finish the collection before my next advisor check-in in 2 weeks, but I'm not sure that's possible. At least I'd like to have read enough that I can pitch a possible paper topic. This week is not looking good, with voting research tonight and the watch-and-wait tomorrow. I'm hoping I can negotiate some kid-free work time this weekend.

Last week I got through Clifford, started on Elizabeth, and got some research and writing done about representations of motherhood and actual motherhood in the Renaissance. It seems like there may be newly published relevant primary sources out there, and at first glance the secondary sources look interesting but not overwhelming in number (yet).

And my new favorite YouTube-ish video is Stephen Greenblatt on the Colbert Report comparing the candidates to Shakespearean characters.

The Dog Ate My Book

2008-10-29T22:02:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-29T13:34:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-22T21:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-21T22:41:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-21T16:43:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

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 . . .

2008-10-16T22:34:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-16T21:59:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-13T11:06:00.001-07:00

**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

2008-10-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-12T20:23:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-11T16:46:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-10T22:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-07T21:32:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-10-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-10-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

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

This week (and my exams)

2008-10-06T13:17:00.001-07:00

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

2008-10-06T11:04:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-10-06T10:46:00.000-07:00

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?!?

2008-10-04T20:54:00.000-07:00

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?

Progress Monitor

2008-09-29T13:02:00.000-07:00

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 . . .

2008-09-28T20:23:00.001-07:00

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 . . .

2008-09-23T10:45:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-22T22:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

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