Progress?

Well, I've read the majority of Death of a Salesman (I know, I know, I'm the last person on earth to read Miller, but this is why I got assigned it for American History, because the prof wanted someone to read it who hadn't before), and I'm almost done the edited Program of Study. I finally read through the specifics of grantscrafting lady's response to my PoS, and she actually barely said anything in the document. She made some superficial changes to the way I listed my courses, and that was it. She didn't even attempt to correct any grammar, or point out some obviously awkward/cumbersome sentences. I think she read it and was like "There's no time and the whole thing needs an overhaul! I give up!"

I had a good talk with Karl about this quandary, and we've decided that our perceptions of "rough first drafts" and others' perceptions are quite different. When he had his now-supervisor read over his SSHRC draft last year, she pretty much thought he shouldn't even try. And he won a SSHRC. I do my best work in the editing process. My first draft is to get out all the details, and experiment. Then, I change based on feedback. I live off of feedback. (My first draft of my thesis is barely recognisable as being part of my thesis.)

And so I'm nearly finished the PoS, so that I can e-mail it to Dr. Supervisor. I'm just stuck in the part where I sort of review the literature and talk about my specific research plan. I re-divided the whole thing, and place the largest focus on my dissertation's "research question." Then I follow that with how I addressed this question in my MA thesis, how I'm approaching it (lit. review and research plans) for my diss., and then the whole dissemination process (journals, conferences). This is a deviation from my original draft, but also from the Grantscrafter, who wanted me to address the dissertation first, then my coursework, then the "dissemination" and finally my thesis and how it fits in with my diss. I find that approach to be choppy. Doesn't the thesis seem like it would be coming out of left field, then? How I've restructured, the thesis is just one component in the whole dissertation research process. It's the small way in which I addressed the question, and now here are my plans on expansion.

I feel particularly pleased with myself right now, in spite of the fact that there is still this hold in the PoS, where I need to talk about future research. I hate this part: I have a bunch of vague plans right now, but for goodness sake, I'm not working on this for another couple of years. I want to explore the issue of Keun further, yes (her book Gilgi will be really appropriate, once I can read German, since it's untranslated). I want to go to the Hans-Fallada-Archiv in Carwitz. I want to look at films, but I really don't know which ones yet. I want to compare these fictionalised accounts with other contemporary public writings, such as those in newspapers. Oh, and it would help to read all these novels in German finally, but I don't know that here is the place to address that (that was more appropriate in my opening statement for my thesis defense, because the external is from the German Dept.)

A bunch of other people have done similar things (okay, Deborah Smail and that guy whose book is sitting on my desk, you know whatshisface) and I always sound awkward in lit reviews. Actually, I think I can contend that my specific approach has been fairly unexplored, even though you can find studies that vaguely resemble it.

Blah. Maybe I should copy and paste the above. I'm sure everyone would love the whatshisface comment.