"Very Greatly Improved"

Well, the words from my dissertation director are....
"Very Greatly Improved"!!!!!*

This is excellent news, as my fear was that it would be more like, "What is this garbage?" or "How did you find a two-year-old to write this for you?"

Of course, "My God, your genius has brought me to tears" or simply "Best. Dissertation. Ever." would have been nice.

But her comments were sent only in a quick email to temper my anticipation. Of her changes, two are minor, and the third I knew I was a problem and needed some time to figure it out.

This is excellent news and for sure an inspiration to keep myself going!

Yippee! It's so great to learn that I don't suck!

*She was referring to the previous chapter draft she had seen.

Moving on

Nella Larsen in a photo
shot by Carl Van Vechton

My original intention upon finishing my last chapter was to immediately catch up on some background reading. That is, reading that is generally related to my subject - mass media, photography, etc - but not specifically related to the chapter - Nella Larsen.

Although this background reading is essential, after only one week of it, it makes me feel directionless and floundering. I need to balance this general work with specific research on my topic. I don't want to take as long with this chapter as I did with my last one. My goal is really to have it done by May or June, which is not too far away!!!!

Also, after getting some feedback from a friend on my first chapter, I feel that I want to make the link between photography and Larsen much more specific. In other words, I really want to demonstrate that Larsen was aware of the role photography played in her writing. There were a number of photographs taken of her by Carl Van Vechten, a publisher, and I need to look into the publication history of them. There is little mention of photography in either of the books I plan to write about, though there is a painted portrait that plays an important role in Quicksand.

I might need to start some of the archival work I want to do at the Smithsonian. In order to do this archival work, however, I need to understand the role the mass media magazines played in the lives of African Americans. I am just starting this process and there might be a whole new slew of magazines I need to research. Was there a Vogue equivalent for the African American female audience of the Harlem Renaissance? Certainly, it must have been commercially viable. And there is no doubt that these women are absent from the "mass" media publications of the time I have seen. Did this absence mean that Larsen avoided these publications or were they all the more compelling to her? Where were images of African American writers and artists published? I know they are out there!

Lots of questions. Stay tuned to what I hope will be the answers.

Marching Band

It's a troubling fact of academia that hard-sought successes are met with very little fanfare.

There are no medal ceremonies, no awards speeches, no product sponsorships. One must be responsible for patting oneself on one's back and, as you might imagine, it can be hard to reach.

I would like to thank my friend then for sending me this marching band as a form of congrats. Check out the twirler who almost goes the wrong way in the beginning. Adorable and a great metaphor for life's little tumbles.

I am not sure why all the twirlers are white girls and the drummer black boys, though. That's a little disturbing. Or why they look like they are in pain.

Oh now, look at me overanalyzing my marching band!

I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emGjaad-elQ

Finit - For Now

In my enthusiasm for FINISHING MY FIRST CHAPTER!!!!! I forgot to post last week! How silly of me. Yes, chapter one is complete and handed off to my dissertation committee chair. I am a little anxious to hear what she has to say. What if she wants me to trash the whole thing and start all over? That's my worst fear. That is probably unlikely given that she has seen a previous draft, but still, I have become expert at creating major suckage dissertation-related scenarios. It takes discipline not to fall into that trap.

I was at first concerned that the push to finish chapter one would leave me too exhausted to pursue chapter two. This has not happened so far. I am excited to finally be able to start moving through a pile of books I have not been able to get to since my emphasis has been on writing these past few weeks.

My dissertation is also evolving in ways that I find exciting. I find that I am steering clear from some of my original ideas related to celebrity culture. One of the reasons for this is that recent research has demonstrated that there is a lot of work already being done in this area. Secondly, I am still primarily interested in how photographic form and structure overlaps with literary form and structure.

My next chapter is on Nella Larsen. One thing I have noticed so far is that there is actually very little work at all on photograph and African-American writers. I look forward to learning more.

For anyone who has not heard of Larsen, she is a Harlem Renaissance writer mostly known for two novels, Quicksand and Passing. Both are exceptional and worthwhile to read. There are a few good bios online if you google her. She, like Rhys, was rediscovered after years absent from the public eye. Larsen fell out of favor as a consequence of false accusations of plagiarism.

Larsen got published with the help of Carl Van Vechton, who was also and photographer and a close friend of Gertrude Stein's. It's six degrees of modernism.