OMG! Eavan Boland is doing a reading at Vanderbilt in April!

...I kind of want to ask her to sign the bound copy of my thesis I have. I feel like maybe that would be weird?

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Oh, scholarly journals. Such mixed messages. The submission guidelines call for endnotes, yet all the articles in the current issue have footnotes. Way to be inconsistent.

At least everyone seems to be using Chicago style, even if the guidelines call for either that or MLA. Which means I'll have to switch my citations, but I can live with that. The bigger problem is the introduction, which I've already cut down, but which needs to be even shorter, with most of the background criticism moved to a foot/endnote. I think I'm just not going to bother integrating much, if anything, from chapter three into this article, because it feels pretty self-contained as it is, but I still need to write a new conclusion, and in doing so come up with a way to tightly tie everything back into what my new introduction states.

I used to say that my favorite part of writing nonfiction was revision, but I will amend that--it's revision of the first draft, where the ideas are on the page, but need to be expanded and prettied into their final form. This business of chopping up and reworking an already-written set of ideas is no fun at all.

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I passed my defense!!

ETA: After the initial burst of excitement... It went really well. All three of my committee members think the thesis could be turned into both an article and a book. I'm going to meet with one of them later this semester to talk about how to write a proposal for publishers.

Okay. I've officially absorbed all I can about the Western canon. I started with Beowulf at nine this morning and finished with Song of Solomon a few minutes ago. I discovered as I rehearsed my spiels about Joyce's modernist aislingí; borderer tensions in Henry V; objectification and agency of women in Donne, Herrick, Keats, Yeats, and Heaney; and the relationship between Wordsworthian Romanticism, Shelly's Defense, and Emerson's transcendentalist essays, that I could easily take up an hour or more with just them if my committee gives me enough rein to do it, so that makes me feel pretty good. (I can also do a mean analysis of Jude the Obscure and naturalism if necessary, then throw in some Ian Watt as he relates to Pamela and Emma, not to mention go on for aaaaages about time, layers of consciousness, and unreliable narration in Woolf, Conrad, and/or Ford. As long as they start me out on one of these--and I'm betting it'll be the objectification topic, as it follows directly from the thesis, which we'll spend the first half hour talking about--I'm good to go.)

Tomorrow I'm going to sit and just re-read some of Boland's poetry, because, hey, probably a good idea to have it fresh in my head, and also to remind myself that, oh, yes, I do actually like her work, even after the past year working so closely with it.

My Modernism prof loved my formal paper proposal, so that's good. She recommended a section of another book for me to read, this one on Unanimism in Woolf's writing, which is also good, as it sounds terribly helpful, although at the moment the thought of adding anything else to my gargantuan bibliography kind of makes me hyperventilate. I just hope she doesn't expect me to have it all read by the time we meet on Thursday, 'cause that won't happen.

I got the impression that my thesis chair is okay with me not making any more changes to my thesis unless I want to/have time, so that's pretty amazing. I do want to fix the opening, the first two paragraphs of which he says could be clarified (and I agree), but at least I don't have to do it before the defense. As long as I can get it done to my satisfaction by 4/23, it's all good.

I am all but done with typing up my oral exam review! I have, um, 54 single-spaced pages full of bullet points about pretty much the entire Western canon. I lack only some stuff on Oronooko, The Scarlet Letter, My Antonia, Midnight's Children, Waiting for Godot, and a couple Stoppard plays. I do need to go back over my underlinings in Antonia and Gatsby (although the Gatsby one are from junior year of high school, so who knows how helpful they'll be...but anyway). My study group and I are going to have our own mock exams on Saturday and Monday, which should be nerves-calming. Maybe. I'm also going to track down my entire committee and make them aware of what I actually want to talk about in this thing. (To wit: BRITISH MODERNISM. And when we can't talk about that, British and American Romanticism, British Victorianism, twentieth-century American drama, American poetry from Whitman to the present, and perhaps the postmodern novel, plus some Shakespearean histories and maybe some Beowulf if we must. I could probably do a brief section of the eighteenth-century novel if I had to, but if they give me a question on the seventeenth century I'm going to cry. If they ask me about the medievals I'll probably still cry, but not as hard. Actually, if we could just clear off pretty much everything before 1800, I'd be okay with that...)

I hear through the grapevine internets that Castle got 3.6 in the ratings last night, beating a first-run episode of CSI: Miami. WOOT! And given the ending, I'm guessing a bunch of those new people will be tuning back in next week... :D

I realize that in the eyes of at least three people on my flist this is sacrilege, but it has to be said: The Good Soldier is dull, dull, dull, dull. I get why it's important, and reading Ford's "On Impressionism" before tackling the novel did make it make more sense than it might have otherwise, but my GOD is it boring. 278 pages of "I don't caaaaaare!", in fact. And I spent last spring reading multitudinous Victorian novels, so it's not like I don't have a good point of comparison.

That's it, really. Just had to get that off my chest. Now I must go attempt to transform the last few pages of chapter four into a real conclusion for the thesis.

From alethialia:

Today has been declared lurker amnesty day (by me!) Have you read me but never commented? Do you surf by occasionally? Here for the ficinsanity? Say hello! You are under no obligation to ever comment or delurk again, but here's a chance to do so in a post just for that.

I love talking to people via LJ comments. Welcome!

*

I...think I might be finished with my revisions to chapters 1-3? Maybe? Well, okay, not exactly. There are two or three spots in chapter three that probably do need to be revised, but I'll need to talk with my director some more before I can figure out how to do that, exactly. And I'm still giving the whole thing to my committee on Friday, so we'll see what they have to say about it. (Perhaps that they see no problems with those spots! That's probably asking too much.)

Ha! I just realized that the reading for Tuesday's modernism class is from a book I currently have checked out of the library for my thesis. And since its the section by Jameson from this book, I've even read it before, although I found it less than useful for my thesis.

Yeah, don't mind me; I'm just geeking out because finally things in my classes are starting to intersect with what I actually consider my field.

Oh, chapter three
you will be
the death of me.

:(

Ahhhh, crap, I think I'm totally arguing two different things in chapter two and chapter four. Crap crap crap crap CRAP.

I have a complete rough draft of my thesis.

Let me repeat that. I HAVE A COMPLETE ROUGH DRAFT OF MY THESIS.

Okay, yes, in the latest chapter there are four or five spots where the analysis is nonexistent wrong paper-thin lacking, shall we say, and I certainly have enough revisions to keep me busy in chapters two and three, but it's all basically there.

YAY!

1. Apparently we're supposed to get 5-9 inches of snow Friday night through Saturday afternoon.

Then again, the high for Saturday is 33F, so it may all turn to rain. I just hope we don't get an ice storm that knocks out the power. (Then again, I have gas heat, so...survivable? With candles?)

2. I talked to my Modernism prof today, and...I think my seminar paper is going to be about 1930s movie musicals and/or screwball comedies and their relationship to modernist ideas about art (or possibly to a particular novel or something; I haven't thought that far ahead yet, seeing as it's due in May). I do love it when my personal interests and professional obligations coincide. :D

3. I've hit the fifty-page mark on the thesis. I think I'm about half a chapter, or two-thirds of a chapter, from a complete rough draft.

Aaaaaiiiieeee, I just scheduled my defense/exam. Morning of April 5th. I NEED TO START BREATHING AGAIN BUT I'M NOT QUITE SURE HOW.

(One of my committee members is a sweet and lovely woman who responds to my e-mails with things like, "Let's rock!" which at least makes me feel a little better. I'm sort of hoping that if I freak out enough now, then I will have reached my limit of freaking-out-ness by April and will thus be preternaturally calm when I'm actually in there doing the oral. We'll see if this theory works out for me.)

*

Since deadlines mean I likely won't be doing another round of music recs for a while, have two that I've been listening to lately, and some musings.

Terminal Star by Karine Polwart. I hadn't listened to this one when I made my last round of recs, but now that I have, I have to, because I have to share some love for a girl who can get her science on in a folk song. It's a song about a star. Literally. I mean, yes, there's probably some kind of veiled metaphor, blah blah blah, but it's about an honest-to-goodness star that died a long time ago but whose light is only reaching Earth now. And you have to admire that. Even more so because the music is nice as well.

Belated Promise Ring by Iron & Wine. (Bonus points for the girl sharing my name. Uh, not totally sure that's flattering, but anyway.) My plan, someday, when I don't have deadlines hanging over my head (so...May, pretty much), is to make a screwball comedy vid to this song. I was originally thinking a single-source vid (likely Bringing Up Baby), but then I thought about how many great ones that would leave out, and I think when I make this vid, it'll use footage from multiple movies. I'm leaning towards something like framing it with clips from Moonlighting, and then doing a kind of retrospective, here-are-interpretations-of-the-archetype deal. The lyrics don't support a typical screwball plot (they don't really have a plot at all), but they evoke the feeling and energy of the two character types in an impressionistic sort of way. The trick would be conveying the zany, rapid-fire movement of the dialogue via physical motion.

Anyway, at the moment I'm thinking of Bringing Up Baby, It Happened One Night, Carefree, and Ball of Fire (a Barbara Stanwyck film from 1940 I watched for my film comedy/romantic comedy class at Exeter...seems to have been overlooked by many, but I really enjoyed it). I know there are several I haven't seen, but they're in my Netflix queue. Actually, maybe it's a good thing I won't have time to do this until May; it might take me that long to figure out what sources to use!

It is gray and disgusting outside. I'm halfway through a novel of which I hate all the characters,* and I have approximately 300 more pages of fiction and criticism to read in the next day so that I can write my response on Sunday. I have just gotten an inkling of the scope of the revisions I will be making to my thesis.** I am continuing to panic over orals.

Something about this situation needs to change.

(BSG's The Plan came in the mail today, but I'm not sure that'll do it. I actually haven't paid any attention to what it's about--it's a prequel? Maybe? I guess I'll find out when I watch it tonight. Not sure if anything BSG-related will make me feel better, given that the show always left me feeling a bit beaten even at the same time as it was amazing, but...we'll see. I'll try and write up some comments, but time is not really something I have in great supply at the moment. I'm still consuming stuff, like this and Castle, but not really posting about it, as I'm sure you've noticed. Maybe in May...)

* Although I will admit, reading Dorian Gray as a Modernist novel rather than a Victorian one improves it by about 10,000%. And I like the plot and the ideas in the book; it's just the people I can't stand.

** Well, my director said that almost all of his suggestions were optional, but come on. Once you know something needs to be changed, you can't unknow it.

Three things:

1. Class didn't go quite as well today as it did on Tuesday, but it was still better than pretty much any day in 101. Things only died down in the last ten minutes, really.

2. Formatting the extant parts of my thesis for review by the formatting guru, or whatever he is, only took about half an hour. And the crazy margins they want magically gave me six more pages. I can't complain.

3. I have to re-read Picture of Dorian Gray again by Tuesday. DO NOT WANT. (You ever read a novel where you just hate every single person in it? That would be this novel for me. Blech.)

Critical theorists, I need your help! I've got this half-finished introductory paragraph to my last chapter, and I can tell I need to namecheck someone, but I can't think of who it is. Someone out there has written on modernity/progress vs. tradition/stagnation and the dialectic of the break and whatnot, but I can't think of who it might be. I'm sure we'll cover it in my Modernism seminar this semester, but I kind of need to have this chapter finished by the fourth, so I turn to you.

If it helps, the paragraph is ( under the cutCollapse )

Possibly I also need to reference someone on urbanization? I was thinking of Anderson, but I had to return the copy of Imagined Communities I checked out, and my notes don't indicate that he covers quite what I feel is missing. I'm not recalling Jameson as being helpful either, but maybe...? Argh, so frustrating. I know there's stuff out there on this, but I don't even know where to start looking.

What is this? Since when does it stay so freaking cold in Nashville? ARGH. And the snow predicted for tomorrow night is supposed to accumulate up to 4" and hang around through the weekend. BAH HUMBUG.

However, as long as it's gone from the interstate by the time I head back to school this weekend, I guess I can deal. While complaining loudly, anyway. Knoxville had better be warmer.

(Ooof. Speaking of school, I should get on that whole "developing an argument for the fourth chapter of my thesis" I had plans for this week. My advisor suggested something to do with the metaphor at the end of Bishop's "At the Fish Houses" for a starting point of comparison, which seems as good as any. He also suggested looking at essays by Lyn Hejinian, which I have not quite gotten around to yet. My other thought is that this is a.) a chapter about language, and b.) the last chapter, and maybe I can just chuck the theoretical background and do close readings of Boland's language until a point emerges. This seems a bit like cheating, though. I need to go back through my notes in Zotero.)

*

A hilarious video I found on YouTube last night: What if George Lucas restored Singin' in the Rain?

The to do list on my whiteboard contains the following entry: "thesis proofing." It means "proofreading," of course, but when I was checking it off,* I totally got the mental image of "thesis-proofing my apartment."

Rampaging thesis! If I'm not careful, it'll stick its fingers in electrical sockets and drink bleach! I need to cover my outlets with pictures of the Shan Van Vocht and hide the shamrock-covered bell on my bookcase.

* MY SEMESTER IS FINALLY DONE HURRAH HURRAH HURRAH!!!! Except for letting the computer average all my students' grades and submitting them, anyway, but that's the last little bit.

This lack of e-mailed comments is really starting to get annoying. lj_maintenance claims it's fixed, but as yet I have nothing in my inbox. Did the snowflake cookies break LJ permanently?

*

( Interview meme from loneravenCollapse )

I know I'm supposed to keep the meme going by telling you all I'll give you questions, but I'm still deep in the thesis cave right now. You can ask, and I'll get back to you eventually, but it may take a while.

*FLOPS*

My GOD, writing this chapter was like herding a pack of ADHD squirrels. Who were all on speed. GAAAAH. I think I ended up trying to argue about four different things, and I really only needed to do one of them. And it's been like this since October.

But I now have a complete draft, finally. There are still some sections where I've got placeholder words or phrases enclosed in angled brackets that I need to make clearer tomorrow, but at least it's all at the sentence-level now, and not "Insert paragraph on x" or similar. It's still only fourteen pages, which isn't a bad thing, necessarily--my intro is ten, and my second chapter is sixteen--but after all the work I put into it, I expected more. Then again, perhaps all the work I put into it just made it a really dense fourteen pages. I'll keep telling myself that, anyway.

Graded five papers today when I was stuck on a paragraph. Still have forty-odd more to go, but at least they aren't getting these back, and so I don't have to write up my usual paragraph of comments at the end. That should make it go much more quickly. (Good thing, since I need to submit grades on Saturday before I go back to Nashville for the break.)

In better news, I had a student e-mail me today wanting to know what books to get for next semester, and saying how excited he was about the class topic (science fiction, for anyone who's new here). Awww. 102 is going to be so much more fun to teach than 101 was.

And in really super-exciting news, I was not expecting such a amazing response to my Ginger and Fred vid! I don't think I've ever gotten two pages of comments on anything before! And the stats on the streaming version say there's been almost 900 views so far. I am so pleased that so many people enjoyed it. :)