origin
I'm creating this online journal as a way to work out some ideas leading up to my dissertation. Ideally, I would like this "blog" to work as a virtual workshop. I'm (hopefully) going to be posting notes, quotes, extended ruminations, and perhaps more formal written explorations. I would love to read feedback on any and everything that makes its way to these pages.
In a forthcoming post, I will explain in more detail exactly what I'm working on. But for now the basics: I'm a graduate student in the English Department at the University of California-Davis. I'm in my fourth year, and I'm currently putting together my dissertation prospectus, which will lead to my qualifying exams and thence to the actual book itself. I'm surrounded by good folks--both faculty and peer--here, but with schedules being what they are, we don't always have the opportunity to sit down and talk out our various ideas, to bounce random thoughts around between us. And that's how I work best. I'm a talker, and I need to write or speak my ideas in order to make them make sense, and I need to hear what others say, so that I can learn and develop in response. It's my hope that this forum will allow me to do just that. With your help.
There are many other reasons for this venture, but that's the main one. Another is that as I get further and further away from coursework, I'm beginning to worry about the lack of critical writing that I've been engaged with lately. I worked over a paper for publication last summer (rejected, alas), but other than that, the last actual paper that I wrote was in Fall 2003, and that worries me. So another hope that I have is that by making posts large and small, formal and informal here, I will begin to work my ideas out in a more structured written form.
And so the hopes accumulate...
In a forthcoming post, I will explain in more detail exactly what I'm working on. But for now the basics: I'm a graduate student in the English Department at the University of California-Davis. I'm in my fourth year, and I'm currently putting together my dissertation prospectus, which will lead to my qualifying exams and thence to the actual book itself. I'm surrounded by good folks--both faculty and peer--here, but with schedules being what they are, we don't always have the opportunity to sit down and talk out our various ideas, to bounce random thoughts around between us. And that's how I work best. I'm a talker, and I need to write or speak my ideas in order to make them make sense, and I need to hear what others say, so that I can learn and develop in response. It's my hope that this forum will allow me to do just that. With your help.
There are many other reasons for this venture, but that's the main one. Another is that as I get further and further away from coursework, I'm beginning to worry about the lack of critical writing that I've been engaged with lately. I worked over a paper for publication last summer (rejected, alas), but other than that, the last actual paper that I wrote was in Fall 2003, and that worries me. So another hope that I have is that by making posts large and small, formal and informal here, I will begin to work my ideas out in a more structured written form.
And so the hopes accumulate...
posted by TRM at 10:30 AM
2 Comments:
Because you're looking to stories to understand the creation of Western place, you'll probably be looking at, among other things, narrative form. Narrative form seems like a kind of "place," a container of space that ascribes a story's space with meaning. Still, is it the place/home of the speaker or of the subject who "actually" occupies this space between words? It would be interesting to work with a text like My Antonia to see how the parameters of narrative form—which shelter, contain, limit Western subjects (in this case, one who already seems to metaphorically represent her space-made-place)—at some point break open and make way for plural Antonias, with the Antonia of the novel's end standing as a different character than the one to whom Jim introduced us. This break might be a kind of return to "space," as place can no longer contain the multiple meanings of one Western pioneer. The fences of place bust open in order to allow for the restlessness and fluidity of Western identities.
very interesting idea, Julie. I like the connection to the form--I wonder how you might tie in Mark Twain to this. I haven't read My Antonia, so I don't know, but it seems like Twain's creation of various Western identities and voices would be interesting to look at.
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