Do you want some of my fan studies biblio? I don't deal with historical ff per se, but I'm doing some stuff on pathologisation/depathologisation of fans and the 'acafan problem' using Bourdieu and cultural capital, which might be useful to you. I'm working on what I truly hope is the final version of that bit now (done by mid-May) if you want to read that part of the lit review as well.
A proposal defence is an interesting event. The committee is there to help the candidate, not to test him/her. Even so, I've seen some very nervous candidates (been one myself).
A nine-page prospectus seems very short to me. Mine was 40 pages long. One of my colleagues, when she teaches graduate methods, urges students to, in essence, submit about half the finished dissertation as the proposal (intro chapter, lit review, theory chapter). I am not so rigid; I'd like to see something of a bibliography and a stab at theory in the proposal.
Some good theory-making has come out of proposal defences, especially when the candidate is most of the way, but not quite all the way, to developing a sound theory.
I wonder if, in a way, you could argue that Tolkien wrote Edda fanfic.
That's interesting. My brother was just saying on the DW side that his prospectus defense was very much like his diss defense--just in future tense. I'm fascinated by the differences in the fields and the specific universities.
The bibliography took it well over 9 pages, but I didn't want to include it when talking about sharing the text. :)
Re Tolkien: I bet you could! It is, sadly, outside my scope. One of the major things to come out of the defense was my ongoing need to manage my scope. I'm covering over 2000 years of literary history, and I'm going to have to both be brutal in my choices, and thorough in my defense of those choices.
It sounds to me as if you're going to end up with a case-study approach. That's one way to manage the scope of your subject. Kwasi Kwarteng looked at the history of the British empire by examining a number of cases each with its own history, and showing how those cases paralleled each other. That's one way of doing the job. Not the only one by any means.
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Do you want some of my fan studies biblio? I don't deal with historical ff per se, but I'm doing some stuff on pathologisation/depathologisation of fans and the 'acafan problem' using Bourdieu and cultural capital, which might be useful to you. I'm working on what I truly hope is the final version of that bit now (done by mid-May) if you want to read that part of the lit review as well.
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A nine-page prospectus seems very short to me. Mine was 40 pages long. One of my colleagues, when she teaches graduate methods, urges students to, in essence, submit about half the finished dissertation as the proposal (intro chapter, lit review, theory chapter). I am not so rigid; I'd like to see something of a bibliography and a stab at theory in the proposal.
Some good theory-making has come out of proposal defences, especially when the candidate is most of the way, but not quite all the way, to developing a sound theory.
I wonder if, in a way, you could argue that Tolkien wrote Edda fanfic.
Reply
The bibliography took it well over 9 pages, but I didn't want to include it when talking about sharing the text. :)
Re Tolkien: I bet you could! It is, sadly, outside my scope. One of the major things to come out of the defense was my ongoing need to manage my scope. I'm covering over 2000 years of literary history, and I'm going to have to both be brutal in my choices, and thorough in my defense of those choices.
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