D.O.N.E.

So, it's been an incredibly long time since my last post, and a lot has happened. First of all, the BIG NEWS is that I am done. I filed my dissertation -- Placing the West: Landscape, Literature, and Identity in the American West -- a little over a week ago, and I have a nice little certificate that states that I "have completed all requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in ENGLISH." I guess that makes me a Doctor, yeah? Woohoo!

In other exciting news, I also learned recently that a pared-down version of my third chapter has been accepted for publication at Western American Literature, the big-time journal in the field.

Ironically, that third chapter was at the heart of the "dilemma" that I wrote about so long ago in my last post. I got over the quandary, and focused the chapter solely on Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping (putting her in the context of other Western women writers). The article is an even tighter focus, but one that sums up a lot of what the whole dissertation project is about. It is entitled "Erased by Space, Ignored by History: Place and Gender in Marilynne Robinson's West," and will take about a year to reach print. But in the meantime, I am dancing with much unexpected joy.

Perhaps at some point in the near future, I will do a retrospective here of the last few months and how I got to this point and how the book finally took shape (I know all you out there are waiting anxiously for the details). Now, though, I'm off to the land of thinking about anything at all other than Western literature. At least for a little bit. What a wonderful place it will be...