Academic Ideas Dump
I emailed a friend today about what I've got currently in the works, some of which you'd already have seen before, but just reposting:
Idea #1 was to have a look at Victorian literature and do a lit review of sorts on the kind of racialized depictions of the era, and then compare it to racialized depictions today in current steampunk lit (or subculture, which is where most of the most egregious racefail is). Since it's an MRP, I thought of extending this a bit further into discussing how to best subvert these tropes in order to apply a most postcolonial perspective to steampunk today.
Idea #2 is to take some texts and apply the appropriate theory - I've got theory on race, postcolonialism, performativity and something else I can't remember right now. Doing this seems rather... lacking somehow.
Idea #3 is something I toyed with, which is something that's permissible in my MRP - explore how to properly combine the steampunk aesthetic with postcolonialism, and write a novella that does this. I get to do this, but I'm not sure what my chances of moving onto a PhD would be if I did this. I would really rather not have this MA be my terminal degree... Still, as a writer, this seems to me the most intuitive thing to do!
Idea #4 was something I came up with today after talking to a prof, and she rather liked Idea #1, and said that I would pick certain tropes used today, and trace their genealogies. I kind of like this idea, and thought it might be useful to use particular texts from the last five years, specifically Jay Lake, Cherie Priest/Dru Pagliassotti and Stephen Hunt (I did not know Court of the Air was just the start
of a series. I am all over it now).
I've since combined Ideas #1 and #4 into something that might be a workable PhD project - tracing the genealogies of specific racialized tropes most associated with major racial groups in how they're portrayed when framed in the White Gaze (for example, the Yellow Peril re: East Asians, how it's constructed now and how it came to this point). And by since I mean, since this morning.
I ran into Dr. A while fetching essays from my mailbox (I gave back my first set of essays!) and she invited me into her office to chat about how my MRP is going, since she's rarely on campus. I asked her if she'd like to supervise my MRP and she said sure ^_________^ She's a second reader for a PhD student I ran into and I asked her about other faculty.
I'm very keen on Idea #3, which entails reading up on / owning more postcolonial theory. It rather reminds me of the MA in CW at I believe the University of Hawaii where grad students have to write a book, and their defense involves explaining how their book is situated in their chosen genre.
I'm thinking maybe I could do something similar. It'd be fun! And it'd integrate steampunk AND postcolonialism meanderings into applications almost right away. Then I can think about my PhD.
Thoughts?
Idea #1 was to have a look at Victorian literature and do a lit review of sorts on the kind of racialized depictions of the era, and then compare it to racialized depictions today in current steampunk lit (or subculture, which is where most of the most egregious racefail is). Since it's an MRP, I thought of extending this a bit further into discussing how to best subvert these tropes in order to apply a most postcolonial perspective to steampunk today.
Idea #2 is to take some texts and apply the appropriate theory - I've got theory on race, postcolonialism, performativity and something else I can't remember right now. Doing this seems rather... lacking somehow.
Idea #3 is something I toyed with, which is something that's permissible in my MRP - explore how to properly combine the steampunk aesthetic with postcolonialism, and write a novella that does this. I get to do this, but I'm not sure what my chances of moving onto a PhD would be if I did this. I would really rather not have this MA be my terminal degree... Still, as a writer, this seems to me the most intuitive thing to do!
Idea #4 was something I came up with today after talking to a prof, and she rather liked Idea #1, and said that I would pick certain tropes used today, and trace their genealogies. I kind of like this idea, and thought it might be useful to use particular texts from the last five years, specifically Jay Lake, Cherie Priest/Dru Pagliassotti and Stephen Hunt (I did not know Court of the Air was just the start
of a series. I am all over it now).
I've since combined Ideas #1 and #4 into something that might be a workable PhD project - tracing the genealogies of specific racialized tropes most associated with major racial groups in how they're portrayed when framed in the White Gaze (for example, the Yellow Peril re: East Asians, how it's constructed now and how it came to this point). And by since I mean, since this morning.
I ran into Dr. A while fetching essays from my mailbox (I gave back my first set of essays!) and she invited me into her office to chat about how my MRP is going, since she's rarely on campus. I asked her if she'd like to supervise my MRP and she said sure ^_________^ She's a second reader for a PhD student I ran into and I asked her about other faculty.
I'm very keen on Idea #3, which entails reading up on / owning more postcolonial theory. It rather reminds me of the MA in CW at I believe the University of Hawaii where grad students have to write a book, and their defense involves explaining how their book is situated in their chosen genre.
I'm thinking maybe I could do something similar. It'd be fun! And it'd integrate steampunk AND postcolonialism meanderings into applications almost right away. Then I can think about my PhD.
Thoughts?