Checking in
Hi all! I am still dissertating! It is...going, if not going as quickly as I'd like.
I've been kind of avoiding talking about the diss much on LJ/DW because, though I know y'all are super-supportive and awesome, somewhere along the line I started thinking of y'all as part of the audience of the final product, and I needed to stop doing that. I mean, odds are good I'll convert it to a book that will become part of the fandom-as-academic-subject literature, but for the moment, if I ever want to finish the damned thing, I need to think of my committee as the audience, and not fandom as the audience. It was gumming up my brain for a while there, because it effects the way I frame things, and to what extent I assume my audience already knows fannish history and/or vocabulary. So. For now, my audience is one classicist, one communications prof, and two complit profs. Edits for a broader audience can come later.
Meanwhile, I've been working on the Aeneid chapter all summer, and it's dragging. The Aeneid is not my favorite thing. I much prefer Homer to Vergil, in the same kinds of ways that I prefer Michael Keaton's Batman to Christian Bale's. I don't hate the new Batman, I just prefer the one I saw first, loved first, and rewatched over and over as a kid.
Also, I find the Romans overly obsessed with duty and piety compared to the Greeks, and the Aeneid is pretty much the epitome of that. So I have a lot to say about it as a rewrite that is specific to its place and time (which is the theoretical thread holding all my chapters about various rewrites together); it's just not very *fun*.
Though talking about the medieval romance rewrites is pretty fun. The Roman d'Eneas doesn't give a shit about the founding of Rome. Let's have some knights and swooning lovers!
So, okay. I need to finish that chapter, like, this week, so that I can move on to the folklore chapter and talk about the Grimms, and probably also Seanan McGuire's Indexing because it is amazing and a perfect example of self-aware postmodern folklore rewriting.
So. I guess what I could use is some encouragement to finish up the Vergil chapter. And maybe some people that would be interested in reading things even before I rewrite them for a more general audience? My advisor isn't nearly as over my shoulder now as she was when I was writing my exams (she has her own new book coming out this year), so could use some informal readers to keep me motivated.
Also posted at http://kouredios.dreamwidth.org/251281.html ; feel free to comment there if you so choose: add comment/
comments.
I've been kind of avoiding talking about the diss much on LJ/DW because, though I know y'all are super-supportive and awesome, somewhere along the line I started thinking of y'all as part of the audience of the final product, and I needed to stop doing that. I mean, odds are good I'll convert it to a book that will become part of the fandom-as-academic-subject literature, but for the moment, if I ever want to finish the damned thing, I need to think of my committee as the audience, and not fandom as the audience. It was gumming up my brain for a while there, because it effects the way I frame things, and to what extent I assume my audience already knows fannish history and/or vocabulary. So. For now, my audience is one classicist, one communications prof, and two complit profs. Edits for a broader audience can come later.
Meanwhile, I've been working on the Aeneid chapter all summer, and it's dragging. The Aeneid is not my favorite thing. I much prefer Homer to Vergil, in the same kinds of ways that I prefer Michael Keaton's Batman to Christian Bale's. I don't hate the new Batman, I just prefer the one I saw first, loved first, and rewatched over and over as a kid.
Also, I find the Romans overly obsessed with duty and piety compared to the Greeks, and the Aeneid is pretty much the epitome of that. So I have a lot to say about it as a rewrite that is specific to its place and time (which is the theoretical thread holding all my chapters about various rewrites together); it's just not very *fun*.
Though talking about the medieval romance rewrites is pretty fun. The Roman d'Eneas doesn't give a shit about the founding of Rome. Let's have some knights and swooning lovers!
So, okay. I need to finish that chapter, like, this week, so that I can move on to the folklore chapter and talk about the Grimms, and probably also Seanan McGuire's Indexing because it is amazing and a perfect example of self-aware postmodern folklore rewriting.
So. I guess what I could use is some encouragement to finish up the Vergil chapter. And maybe some people that would be interested in reading things even before I rewrite them for a more general audience? My advisor isn't nearly as over my shoulder now as she was when I was writing my exams (she has her own new book coming out this year), so could use some informal readers to keep me motivated.
Also posted at http://kouredios.dreamwidth.org/251281.html ; feel free to comment there if you so choose: add comment/
comments.