Tag Archives: Graduate School

Dissertation Days (56): Handwriting

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It’s been a while, hasn’t it? What can I say, I’ve been enjoying the time to actually write my Dissertation rather than just write about it, and I’m happy to say that I’ve made tremendous progress on both Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. And boy, does that feel good.

One thing that has really helped lately is taking my chapters and writing the introduction out by hand. This really frees my creativity and thinking in a way that typing on the computer just doesn’t do. I won’t go so far as to say that it’s better, but I do find it particularly useful when I’m struggling to get all of my ideas to fit together on paper the way they do in my head.

I have to say that I’ve been making the best progress I’ve made with these chapters since I finished Chapter 2 a year ago. I think I have finally started to see the flaws in my writing, how those flaws affect my intelligibility, and how to correct them (as much as possible). I do tend to use the word “seem” a lot, which I suspect is a way of disowning the ideas that I’m putting on paper. It’s a bad habit that I’ve gotten into, and I’m determined to break it.

As I work through my revision of Chapter 3, I’m also noticing how very, very wordy I am. It’s not just that I like long sentences and complicated syntax (though that’s true); it’s that I tend to bury my ideas so far into the sentence that whatever claim I’m making is almost totally obfuscated. So, a lot of revision has been about chopping bits and pieces here and there, pruning in order to let the ideas show forth in all of their conceptual glory.

Chapter 4 is also coming along quite nicely (FINALLY). I’ve found the core foci of the chapter, the basic structure, and the way I think it’s going to end up coming together. Now that that heavy lifting is done, I think the rest of it should start congealing. In a way, it feels more like Chapter 2 did as I was writing it, so that is (hopefully) a very good sign indeed.

Tomorrow there is a lot to get done, but I’m confident now that I’ve finally found a groove that works. Maybe, just maybe, I can get this beast done and defended by April.

On second thought.

I will.

Dissertation Days (41): No Title Needed

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Today was a moderately successful day. I only wrote 500 words, but they were good words (I think), so that means a lot (to me, at least). As I always say, any progress is good progress.

The most noteworthy accomplishment today was that I have finally begun to pull the theoretical context together. For me, this is always both the most fun and the most difficult to write. On the one hand, it allows me to really get into the weeds on the theories that I’m working with–whether it’s narrative theory, color theory, or something else–and show how these theoretical models can help us understand the way that film works. It’s a site of play and opportunity, a means of shedding new light on a very dynamic group of films.

However, it’s also a very challenging section as well, in that it can be a place where my own exuberance gets a bit ahead of itself. As my Adviser once remarked, it’s like I try to cram everything I ever read into this tiny section. Again, that has to do with the fact that so much of theory that I’m bringing to bear is so exciting, and it’s quite easy to let it get ahead of me. So, I have to exercise caution.

The other challenge, of course, is making sure that I show how this section leads naturally and organically into the next. Again, it’s really hard to let it sort of spin out of control, so that it seems to float above the other two sections (the historicizing and the close readings themselves). For someone who loves to write, this can be quite the hurdle to overcome.

I also spent part of today’s session working  on the close reading of Cleopatra. Some bits of genuine light have begun to filter though, so I’m very excited about that. In some part of my mind, I’m still wrangling with the last film in the close reading section, but I’m confident that I will be able to fit it into the whole chapter.

The next few days are going to be a bit touch-and-go with Dissertation stuff. I have a conference paper due next week, and a lot of other stuff going on. Still, I hope to chip away at it and eke out a few words. Once next week is over, though, I’ll be back into full composition mode.

Dissertation Days (21): Roadblocks

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I’ve reached that stage in Chapter 3 where I know that the end is in sight, but it’s precisely the nearness of accomplishment that proves more than a little debilitating. Still, it is precisely in those moments that one has to continue onward, pushing past the mental barricades to get to the rich intellectual material beneath.

I did manage to eke out some new material in Chapter 3, both by writing some new stuff and also by importing a paragraph from an earlier draft. The third section still needs a little development to fully cohere, and it’s going to take some doing to make sure that it fits together both internally and with the rest of the chapter, but I think that’s doable, so long as I don’t let myself get bogged down too much.

That being said, I do feel like I made some genuine progress today, and I’m setting Wednesday as the day that I would like to be done with the heavy lifting on this draft. That puts me at just about two months revision which, considering all that’s been going on–pet loss and illness, travel, family obligations–isn’t bad at all. I really do have to keep my momentum going if I want to defend by this coming spring (which I basically have to do regardless). So, any positive thoughts and encouragement y’all could send my way would be much appreciated.

In terms of Chapter 4, I wrote 500 words, mostly in two of my sections that deal with the films. Today, I focused mostly on Anthony Mann’s The Fall of the Roman Empire and John Huston’s The Bible: In the Beginning. At the moment, I’m trying to think through the utopian sensibility that these films express, even as they also acknowledge the rather dystopian realities of history.

Once I settle down again, I am going to need to rewatch both Fall and The Bible. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them, and I need to make sure that I have the type of detail that enables a textured film analysis. Given how much of a stickler I am for sound film criticism, I have to be extra careful to practice what I preach.

On tomorrow’s agenda: keep plodding away at Chapter 3 (as usual). Then it’s on to Chapter 4, and I think I have a rich vein of inquiry ready to be tapped.

Tomorrow is going to be great.

Dissertation Days (20): Inching Along

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Today was a moderately productive Dissertation Day. I didn’t make a huge amount of progress in terms of new words in Chapter 3, but I have finally moved into the final section. I think that another day or two of hard work on that section should see it ready for submission. It’s quite a good feeling, actually. Since it’s not really due until I get back to Syracuse in the middle of June, that gives me plenty of time to finesse it a bit before submitting it.

The Boyfriend was actually looking over my shoulder, and he made an observation that was spot-on. I tend to use a lot of complex (some might even say convoluted) sentence constructions, and while this adds a certain je ne sais quoi to my writing, they can also make it hard to follow my reasoning. Needless to say, one of the things I’ll be focusing on from this point forward is making sure that I add a bit of variety to my sentences.

Of course, it goes without saying that I also excised a few of those damnable couplets, which make far too many appearances in the course of this chapter. I’m sure that their ubiquitous presence says something about the way I think, but at this point in the day I’m not equipped to say what that is.

In other dissertation news, I also managed to make some progress in Chapter 4. I have this particular version labeled as the one that I intend to submit to my Adviser, but I’ve been known to be a bit too optimistic when it comes to those particular aspirations. Still, I do think that the version of this chapter that has been emerging sporadically over the last few months will indeed be the one that I send, even though it requires a lot of work before it gets there.

Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about the progress I’ve been making. The end isn’t quite in sight yet, but it is definitely somewhere just over the horizon line. While May is almost over and I’ve got some traveling coming up, I have most of June and July to be truly productive.

Tomorrow, I plan on finishing up a big chunk of the end of Chapter 3, as well as continuing onward with Chapter 4. Any progress, now matter how small, is a reason for celebration in my book.

Good times ahead.

Dissertation Days (16): Chapter 4!

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In keeping with my promise of last night, I did indeed manage to do a bit of work in Chapter 4. At this point, I’m still sketching in the broader outlines of the historical context, because I think that doing so will help me to get a stronger sense of what it is that I am trying to argue in the chapter as a whole. I’m still doing some of the primary research that I need, but I do think that I have enough basic material to make a solid start in my close analysis of the films.

I’m really trying to work out the tension I see between the spectacle of imperial zenith and the narrative patterns that inevitably connect such splendour with immanent and imminent decline. I’m looking at this phenomenon through three of the final films of the postwar cycle: Cleopatra, The Fall of the Roman Empire, and The Bible: In the Beginning. I’m not sure how well this is going to hold together in the final analysis, but I do think that are some interesting things to argue and say about the utopian longings for a more stable political world that can never really be attained.

Produced in a world that was increasingly full of political doubt and philosophical instability, these films express a form, I think, of imperial melancholy. They mourn a world that was never actually brought into being, a world that is always subjected to the relentless forces of historical change and the inexorable forward movement of time.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get as much work done on Chapter 3 as I would have liked. Family commitments intervened in those attempts, though I hope to get some bits of it done tomorrow. I would like to highlight this particular bit, though, which I think nicely sums up what I’m doing with Nero’s queerness: “He is, in other words, the embodiment of all the terrifying power of history writ large on the great stage of the cinema.”

Tomorrow looks like it’s going to be another day that’s rather tied up with obligations, so who knows how much I’m going to actually be able to get done. Hopefully, though, I can manage to get through some more portions of Chapter 3. If I keep on as I am, it should definitely be ready by the end of next week. Then I can just edit.

On we go.

Dissertation Days (15): Three Outta Five Ain’t Bad!

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I know it’s been a while since I posted a dissertation update. My Parents and I lost a furry member of our family, so we’ve been grieving. Today, though, I knew I had to get back in the swing of things. And here we are.

So, this chapter of my dissertation has basically five complete sections: context (historical); context (theoretical); close reading of Samson and Delilah; close reading of David and Bathsheba; and close reading of Quo Vadis. There is also, of course, a very brief conclusion.

So far, I’ve managed to finish three out of those five, especially since I managed to finish up my close reading of David and Bathsheba. It’s a little briefer than the one about Samson and Delilah, but that’s okay. It’s basically meant to be a complement to that earlier reading, an elaboration of the many ways in which the historico-biblical epic engages with the question of desire and history.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the way that this section turned out, and I think I’ve added some nuance to the ways in which scholars have already talked about the film. I really think that thinking about colour adds a new layer of understanding to the way in which the film engages with the question of history and desire. David and Bathsheba may not have attained quite the canonical status of some other epics of the midcentury period, it does, I think, deserve more critical consideration than it typically receives.

Tomorrow, I’ve got to get deep into the weeds on the section of Quo Vadis. I’ve thought about excising it from the chapter, but have opted not to. I do think there is a strong case to be made for the way in which queer desire in the film operates at the level of form, and it makes a compelling counterpoint to the question of female desire raised by the other films discussed. So, it stays in for right now.

I was planning on submitting this chapter later this month, but since I’ll be traveling for quite a while, I’m going to submit it around the middle of June. However,  I going to continue working on Chapter 4 (which I fully intend to do tomorrow, in addition to my other work).

There is still a lot of work, but I think most of it will be done this week.

It can be done.

Dissertation Days (12): No Rest for the Weary

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Well, I have to break my habit of taking weekends to do creative writing (so no Novel Weekends this weekend, alas), in order to make sure that I continue the momentum with this chapter. I can still see the finish line in the distance, but if I don’t want to lose sight of it I have to keep moving.

I’ll be honest, though; it feels like this revision is eating up my entire life. Ugh. This is what happens when your first draft is a bit of a hot mess (even though it took like 8 months to write). Still, I just have to remember to be patient with myself. Sometimes, the more complex an idea is, the longer it takes to eloquently and coherently articulate it.

Today was a bit of a mixed bag. While I finished up a few sections, there are still that are a bit glaring in terms of their inconsistency. However, the section on female sexuality is almost complete (should be able to definitively finish it tomorrow), and I aim to also finish the section on sexuality and queerness as well. I might even (if I’m extraordinarily lucky and determined) make it most of the way through colour. I was particularly happy with the way that my discussion of fashion turned out today; hoping for more of that sort of breakthrough tomorrow.

Once again, I managed to trim out a few pieces of superfluous material, which I did through a combination of deletion and relegating things to footnotes. I’m well aware that most people don’t even read the damn things, but there are, I think, little tidbits and supplementary information that can’t necessarily be included in the main body of the text but that you want to see the light of day.

So, tomorrow is going to be a busy day. Sunday, alas, is a bit out of the running for work of any kind, though I might be able to squeeze a few pages of the close reading of Samson and Delilah. If not, I am definitely going to try to get both that section and the one on David and Bathsheba done on Monday.

The chapter is sitting at around 18k words, which is pretty long, but I am determined to keep this under 20k. Anything longer than that, and I fear that it is going to lose focus altogether.

But, onward.

And.

Onward.

Dissertation Days (10): Bits and Pieces

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Well, friends, I wasn’t quite as productive as I should have been. It was a busy day of meetings and such, and that prevented me from working on what I had intended to. I just need to remind myself that it’s okay if I don’t meet my goal every single day. Sometimes, it’s not going to be possible for one reason or another, what with grading, editorial stuff, and just general life.

However, I did manage to chip away at a few paragraphs that were giving me a particularly large amount of trouble. I even managed to craft this sentence about the visual contrast between the Philistines and the Danites: “The color scheme, bifurcated as it is along lines of power and prostration, registers the essential brutality of history.” This, in fact, helped me to clarify some of the issues that I’ve been struggling with, and I think it actually may end up being the linchpin for the whole chapter. As I go on to discuss in the rest of the chapter, the spectacle of color provides an immediate experience of the violence of erotic history.

Also, while I’m thinking of it, I also managed to weed out several of my “couplets.” I have this nasty habit of pairing up two nouns (or two adjectives) to round out a sentence. For example, I almost wrote “the violence of the erotic and of history” above but changed it. I don’t know whyI have this habit, but I’m working on breaking it.

I also managed to revise several of the paragraphs associated with my close reading of Samson and Delilah, so that actually felt good. That particular reading is beginning to cohere nicely, and I hope to have it done by early next week (though that means I might have to work during part of the weekend).

There might be a little bit of productivity left in me tonight, but I honestly rather doubt it. However, I do feel like I can get at least 10 pages revised tomorrow, as well as my customary 500 words of Chapter 4. If I’m really lucky, I might even make it entirely through my historical context section. Wouldn’t that be something?

I have to get a lot done in the next couple of days, before the travel-heavy May and June begin.

Sigh. There is, as they say, no rest for the weary.

So, on to another day.

Dissertation Days (9): Rough Days…

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Sometimes, you have a day of writing where nothing goes quite as you want, and you spend hours just sort of agonizing over a few pages, or even a few paragraphs. Hell, even a single paragraph. You flick between different tabs and screens, hoping that the caffeine will kick in and you’ll buzz right through your revisions, carving out something intelligible and witty and dazzling and incisive.

Well, that didn’t happen today.

But then again, perhaps I’m not giving myself enough credit. I did make it through almost 8 pages of the draft I have right now, and I chipped out some bits of fluff, tightened up the language in the intro paragraphs. I also came up with a one-sentence distillation of what this whole damn chapter is about: “History thus becomes [in these films] a pleasurable experience of the destructive power of female and queer male desire, an escape from the tyranny of time and hetero-reproductive historical responsibility.”

It’s still rather buried in a paragraph of other context and theorizing, but that’s the basic message. And it really does convey what I’m hoping to do with this chapter, i.e. make us take seriously the question of sexual desire as a problem for the experience and representation of history, rather than just a sneaky means by which canny directors circumvented the Production Code (though it is that too, of course).

I also managed to eke out 500 words of the fourth chapter, which I think is slowly cohering into something vaguely resembling an argument. I’m going to have to do a little more reading to make sure that all of my ideas fit together, and that I somehow manage to make a convincing argument about the nature of imperialism in the epic that isn’t just warmed-over from what someone else has already written (you’d be surprised how easy that is to do, or to at least perceive that you’re doing it).

I’m honestly not sure how much I’m going to be able to get done tomorrow. Hopefully, I can at least make sure that 5 more pages are in shape that’s ready to go, and that might be about it. Still, at this stage that’s pretty good. I have already made plans to get some good work done on both Thursday and Friday, so there is hope that I can get this done by the end of the month (if not sooner).

Onward!

Dissertation Days (7): Free At Last (For the Weekend)

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Given that I’m utterly exhausted this evening, I doubt I’ll say much.

I did, however, meet my word goal for today. It was a modest 1,000 words, but I’m happy to say that I have almost finished the contextual and theoretical sections. What’s more, I don’t think I’ll have to do a lot of editing/revising to get those 1K I wrote today in submittable shape. I say that now, but who knows what I’ll think when I look at them again.

I finally found a way of making a reference to the fact that statues from antiquity always appear to us as blank white marble rather than in the garish colours they once appeared in. I do think it says something about how we understand our cultural heritage that we quite literally project whiteness and all of its connotations onto everything. Which, to my mind, makes it all the more extraordinary that the epics of the postwar period were so consistently shown in lurid Technicolor (or a related process).

I did some drawing in some stuff from this absolutely batshit book called Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, from 1947. If you ever want to get a glimpse of what nutjobbery women of the postwar period had to put up with, look no further than this book. Seriously. Check it out sometime.

I’ll be taking the weekend off of Dissertation writing, so don’t expect any updates until Monday. I make a firm point of giving myself the weekend to work on other projects, i.e. my novel, non-writing related blog posts, watching films, taking hikes, etc. It keeps me sane (no small task, I assure you).

When I return, though, I really am going to start working on Chapter 4 again. I promise. I really want to feel like I’m making progress on that front again. I think it’s going to be a chapter about…something about imperialism, utopian narratives and spectacle, and the impossibility of political stability. I’ve already written a ton of stuff; I just need to get it into something coherent and cohesive.

When I get back to work on Monday, I also need to start moving into the direction of submission. I’m aiming for mid-May (end of May at the absolute latest), which I think is doable. I just have to stay focused.

Stay focused.

It’s one of the hardest things to do, but…I can do this.

I have to.