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.