A man, a plan, a canal--Suez.
Feb. 1st, 2003 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDis. reading: Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580
---
I don't know why it is that posting on LJ seems to provide a nonthreatening space for me to talk about my dissertation. But I'm not going to argue with myself about it. I'm using cut-tags, so if you're reading this, that's your fault, not mine. So there.
When we left our heroes ...
Here's the sitch. I want to deposit in August (meaning I offer up my dissertation as a sacrifice to the bored and blood-stained gods of the University, and in return I am granted the apotheosis of a Ph.D., which is kind of like climbing past Satan only to find yourself in Purgatory). Ergo, (1) I have to be DONE by August (duh), but also (2) I have to do my defense in June. (Of course, the Department is too PC to actually have an honest-to-god defense. Here we call it a "dissertation conference.")
So by June--well, really, by May, so that my committee has time to digest the entrails and bones (I'm sorry; I'll quit with the disgusting sacrifice metaphor now)--I have to have at least 2/3 of this puppy whipped into something that looks like a thesis instead of just me shooting my mouth off.
That's three months.
Oh fuck.
*pause for Truepenny to put herself back together and quit hyperventilating*
Two chapters (Seneca and Titus Andronicus) are already at least marginally passable. One chapter (the smorgasbord of Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedy) merely needs the simple secondary reading approach, a la every term paper I've ever written. One chapter (Hamlet *crashing chords of doom from Beethoven's Fifth*) needs insane amounts of secondary reading, because everybody plus their dog has written about Hamlet and I'm such a sad Shakespeare fangirl loser that I just had to join the club. And then there's this thing that maybe is a chapter and maybe is part of the (unwritten) introduction that's the cultural history thing, when cultural history is so not my bag, and so requires both more historical reading (hence the Duffy glaring at me like the raven on Poe's bust of Athena) and meta-reading about cultural history, because my dis. director thinks I'm saying something interesting about models of reading literary texts against cultural texts (yes, you should be fleeing in terror right about now). This is also the chapter that needs to go to one of my other committee members before May so that they can sneer at my historical methodology.
And the introduction and conclusion have yet to be written.
*primal scream*
I gotta have a plan? Really? I can't just be proactive with pep?
Okay. Here's my tentative timetable. (And probably come May, y'all can just sit back and laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh at me, but that's fine.)
FEBRUARY: cultural history chapter; read Duffy, Thomas, Finucane (again), Greenblatt, etc. Figure out how to talk about reflection, interaction, and other models of lit/culture analysis, and why none of them work in this case. By March 1, have something to give to godlike committee member for appropriate sneering.
MARCH: All Hamlet, all the time.
APRIL (kalends through ides): smorgasbord chapter. Make it look like I at least vaguely know what the fuck I'm doing.
IDES OF APRIL: reassess feasibility of June defense and August deposit
APRIL (ides through kalends of May): tidy up Seneca and Titus Andronicus chapters
MAY (first week): Introduction; notes toward conclusion
SECOND WEEK OF MAY: deliver ghastly ms, spawn of eldritch nameless evil, to committee.
REMAINDER OF MAY: Write the damn conclusion.
Right. That's my plan. I have no idea if I'm actually capable of this--especially since I also need to finish editing Bk. 1 of The Project here in February--but I am by god going to try.
*resolve-face*
MIRACLE MAX: Have fun storming the castle!
VALERIE: D'you think it'll work?
MIRACLE MAX: It'd take a miracle.
---
I don't know why it is that posting on LJ seems to provide a nonthreatening space for me to talk about my dissertation. But I'm not going to argue with myself about it. I'm using cut-tags, so if you're reading this, that's your fault, not mine. So there.
When we left our heroes ...
Here's the sitch. I want to deposit in August (meaning I offer up my dissertation as a sacrifice to the bored and blood-stained gods of the University, and in return I am granted the apotheosis of a Ph.D., which is kind of like climbing past Satan only to find yourself in Purgatory). Ergo, (1) I have to be DONE by August (duh), but also (2) I have to do my defense in June. (Of course, the Department is too PC to actually have an honest-to-god defense. Here we call it a "dissertation conference.")
So by June--well, really, by May, so that my committee has time to digest the entrails and bones (I'm sorry; I'll quit with the disgusting sacrifice metaphor now)--I have to have at least 2/3 of this puppy whipped into something that looks like a thesis instead of just me shooting my mouth off.
That's three months.
Oh fuck.
*pause for Truepenny to put herself back together and quit hyperventilating*
Two chapters (Seneca and Titus Andronicus) are already at least marginally passable. One chapter (the smorgasbord of Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedy) merely needs the simple secondary reading approach, a la every term paper I've ever written. One chapter (Hamlet *crashing chords of doom from Beethoven's Fifth*) needs insane amounts of secondary reading, because everybody plus their dog has written about Hamlet and I'm such a sad Shakespeare fangirl loser that I just had to join the club. And then there's this thing that maybe is a chapter and maybe is part of the (unwritten) introduction that's the cultural history thing, when cultural history is so not my bag, and so requires both more historical reading (hence the Duffy glaring at me like the raven on Poe's bust of Athena) and meta-reading about cultural history, because my dis. director thinks I'm saying something interesting about models of reading literary texts against cultural texts (yes, you should be fleeing in terror right about now). This is also the chapter that needs to go to one of my other committee members before May so that they can sneer at my historical methodology.
And the introduction and conclusion have yet to be written.
*primal scream*
I gotta have a plan? Really? I can't just be proactive with pep?
Okay. Here's my tentative timetable. (And probably come May, y'all can just sit back and laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh at me, but that's fine.)
FEBRUARY: cultural history chapter; read Duffy, Thomas, Finucane (again), Greenblatt, etc. Figure out how to talk about reflection, interaction, and other models of lit/culture analysis, and why none of them work in this case. By March 1, have something to give to godlike committee member for appropriate sneering.
MARCH: All Hamlet, all the time.
APRIL (kalends through ides): smorgasbord chapter. Make it look like I at least vaguely know what the fuck I'm doing.
IDES OF APRIL: reassess feasibility of June defense and August deposit
APRIL (ides through kalends of May): tidy up Seneca and Titus Andronicus chapters
MAY (first week): Introduction; notes toward conclusion
SECOND WEEK OF MAY: deliver ghastly ms, spawn of eldritch nameless evil, to committee.
REMAINDER OF MAY: Write the damn conclusion.
Right. That's my plan. I have no idea if I'm actually capable of this--especially since I also need to finish editing Bk. 1 of The Project here in February--but I am by god going to try.
*resolve-face*
MIRACLE MAX: Have fun storming the castle!
VALERIE: D'you think it'll work?
MIRACLE MAX: It'd take a miracle.
