Dissertation is a go.
Still many things to write about. Picking just the one today.
Yesterday I defended my dissertation prospectus. "Defend" is a funny word, in an academic context. It doesn't mean that I have to withstand hostile criticism, or volley back; it means that we had a meeting about my topic--that my committee members asked clarifying questions, gave me bibliographical suggestions, oh, and told me how awesome my topic is and how excited they were to be on the committee.
Does that happen a lot? I mean, they thanked me profusely for asking them, because they're so excited about my project. That has to be special, right? It felt special. :)
So. Tentative title, at this juncture: "Translation, Rewriting, and Transformative Work: A Literary Case for the Legitimacy of Fanfiction." There will be translation theory, via talk about "rewriting," there will be narrative theory and intertextuality. There will be chapters canvassing the history of "Western canon" and the ways in which, at both the textual and contextual level, dead white men have been doing a lot of what fandom does today. Except in the ways in which they did not--the ways in which fandom is special. And that gets its own chapter too. In other words, the claim that "Vergil wrote Homer fanfic," that "Milton wrote Bible fanfic," that we make all the time in fandom circles? I'm going to do the work to back that claim up. I don't think anyone's actually done that yet--not at this level of academia, at least. (Let me know if you've seen any of this kind of work, in the peer-reviewed or published sense. I could use the references.)
I have a nine-page prospectus. I'm not going to post it here, but let me know if you'd like to see it, and I'll maybe drop a google docs link. I want feedback; I want to do this right. I also want to make sure I keep my committee happy. I foresee that managing the balance between a fannish audience and an academic one (and an acafan one) will be one of my largest challenges. For the diss proper, I'll have to prioritize the academic audience. If it turns into a book (fingers crossed), I can modify it then.
Thoughts?
Also posted at http://kouredios.dreamwidth.org/213811.html ; feel free to comment there if you so choose: add comment/
comments.
Yesterday I defended my dissertation prospectus. "Defend" is a funny word, in an academic context. It doesn't mean that I have to withstand hostile criticism, or volley back; it means that we had a meeting about my topic--that my committee members asked clarifying questions, gave me bibliographical suggestions, oh, and told me how awesome my topic is and how excited they were to be on the committee.
Does that happen a lot? I mean, they thanked me profusely for asking them, because they're so excited about my project. That has to be special, right? It felt special. :)
So. Tentative title, at this juncture: "Translation, Rewriting, and Transformative Work: A Literary Case for the Legitimacy of Fanfiction." There will be translation theory, via talk about "rewriting," there will be narrative theory and intertextuality. There will be chapters canvassing the history of "Western canon" and the ways in which, at both the textual and contextual level, dead white men have been doing a lot of what fandom does today. Except in the ways in which they did not--the ways in which fandom is special. And that gets its own chapter too. In other words, the claim that "Vergil wrote Homer fanfic," that "Milton wrote Bible fanfic," that we make all the time in fandom circles? I'm going to do the work to back that claim up. I don't think anyone's actually done that yet--not at this level of academia, at least. (Let me know if you've seen any of this kind of work, in the peer-reviewed or published sense. I could use the references.)
I have a nine-page prospectus. I'm not going to post it here, but let me know if you'd like to see it, and I'll maybe drop a google docs link. I want feedback; I want to do this right. I also want to make sure I keep my committee happy. I foresee that managing the balance between a fannish audience and an academic one (and an acafan one) will be one of my largest challenges. For the diss proper, I'll have to prioritize the academic audience. If it turns into a book (fingers crossed), I can modify it then.
Thoughts?
Also posted at http://kouredios.dreamwidth.org/213811.html ; feel free to comment there if you so choose: add comment/
comments.