English Phds what are your topics/areas of focus?

[mudgean]

I'm going to start a Master's program in the Fall at University of Oregon. I think a Phd would require way too much discipline and focus for me, but I am very curious what people choose to focus on. What topics keep people engaged for 5-7 years? There is a woman at Harvard who is writing her dissertation on racial identity as seen by black comedians, up to and including Dave Chapelle, so this field is a lot bigger than I thought. Anyway, I'm trying to get a sense of things. I would love to hear anyone's journey or thought process along these lines.

[Branwen daughter of Llyr]

In general - Medieval and Early Modern (stronger emphasis on medieval, though).

specifically - Arthurian lit, Celtic influences on British lit, and how literature "shapes" reality (i.e. how the literary idea of courtly love infused and shaped actual social conventions and norms). Also very interested in 19th century and contemporary medievalism, as well as the fantasy / sci-fi genres in contemporary lit. One last addition - children's lit (yes, I am an escapist in my literary tastes ). Have no idea how all of this will come together yet. Probably with a PhD in medieval lit concentrating on Aruthurian texts, and later research into how other stuff ties in to it.

[mudgean]

Thanks mocha. After reading Childhood's End and The Martian Chronicles recently, I've developed a taste for sci-fi, and I've always loved children's lit. Medieval literature is my weak point and if I ever take the subject GRE I'm going to have to brush up on it.

Good luck with this process.

[PaperChaser]

Master's Thesis: (it was more timely in 2006...) addiction memoir + Benjamin Franklin (yes, a weird combo, but it works)

Potential PhD Ideas: Visual rhetoric + ICJ + Judith Mason OR legal rhetoric + media construction of "language crimes" OR something involving John Banville if I can somehow tie him to rhet/comp...

I think many people decide after the first couple of years what they'll do for their dissertations when something "sparks" one day....

[lcampb]

Master's Thesis: (it was more timely in 2006...) addiction memoir + Benjamin Franklin (yes, a weird combo, but it works)...

I think many people decide after the first couple of years what they'll do for their dissertations when something "sparks" one day....

Cool! I'm finishing my undergraduate thesis on contemporary female mental illness memoirs at the moment, specifically examining accounts in relation to class, gender, and "self"hood. My sophomore year I wrote a paper that compared Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Benjamin Franklin so I feel like I might have an idea how your combination would work, haha.

In general, I'm interested in gender studies (this year I've been focusing a lot on marginal 70's feminist rhetoric - Black Panther women, women addicted to valium) and psychopathography (autobiography about psychology/illness). I still have a lot of figuring out to do, though. And of course, I wouldn't be going for Rhet/Comp if I wasn't drawn to Composition studies, as well.

I'm working my way through Rothenberg's "Creativity and Madness" for my thesis right now and he argues that creative inspiration is a myth perpetuated by the artistic community but I definitely subscribe to PaperChaser's "spark" theory

[PaperChaser]

Cool! I'm finishing my undergraduate thesis on contemporary female mental illness memoirs at the moment, specifically examining accounts in relation to class, gender, and "self"hood. My sophomore year I wrote a paper that compared Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Benjamin Franklin so I feel like I might have an idea how your combination would work, haha.

In general, I'm interested in gender studies (this year I've been focusing a lot on marginal 70's feminist rhetoric - Black Panther women, women addicted to valium) and psychopathography (autobiography about psychology/illness). I still have a lot of figuring out to do, though. And of course, I wouldn't be going for Rhet/Comp if I wasn't drawn to Composition studies, as well.

I'm working my way through Rothenberg's "Creativity and Madness" for my thesis right now and he argues that creative inspiration is a myth perpetuated by the artistic community but I definitely subscribe to PaperChaser's "spark" theory

OMG!!!!! I once stayed at a b&b the same time that Angela Davis did. (I of course couldn't believe she was THE Angela Davis...) I nearly had a heart attack. And yes, I totally dug through the trash (with the b&b owners!!) for a shred of paper or plane ticket or anything that was authentically hers. So cool. And I am obviously SUCH a dork. I wish I could trade brains with her for a day to put my bosses in their place...

[mudgean]

Addiction memoir sounds very cool..I'm thinking of Burrough's Junkie, Augusten Burrough's Dry, and more recently Mary Carr's Lit.

It makes sense to me that many people focus on the 21st century because there is new literature coming out all the time that needs to be analyzed and viewed through all these different lenses.

What I don't understand is how all these people who specialize, say, in Victorian lit, can be expected to publish articles and books in their field on a regular basis. There are 4,000 universities in the U.S. Let's say each one has at least one Victorian lit professor. Are there 4,000 professors of Victorian lit researching and publishing books in their specialty right now? Do they know what the others are doing, or are they reinventing wheels? True, there are many wonderful yet somewhat obscure authors from that period who have less written about them, but still. There are only so many primary sources from those years I would imagine. You are more likely to come up with something original if you focus on 20th/21st century authors, but each university only needs so many professors in that area.

I'm just curious about this. There are so many sharp people on this site, maybe somebody can fill me in.

Edited March 30, 2010 by mudgean

[Pamphilia]

You are more likely to come up with something original if you focus on 20th/21st century authors.

I respectfully but wholeheartedly disagree.

[Sparky]

There are only so many primary sources from those years I would imagine. You are more likely to come up with something original if you focus on 20th/21st century authors, but each university only needs so many professors in that area.

That assertion only makes sense if you assume there are a finite number of questions that can be asked about each text--and a set definition of what constitutes a "text."

You are more likely to come up with something original if you study something that sets your soul on fire.

[Historiogaffe]

There are only so many primary sources from those years I would imagine. You are more likely to come up with something original if you focus on 20th/21st century authors, but each university only needs so many professors in that area.

I echo Pamphilia on this one.

To answer only one aspect of your question:

As soon as an author dies, their production of primary sources ceases – regardless of the century he or she dies in. As a result, any primary sources aside from that author (e.g., epistolary from relatives) will peter out soon afterward. A dead 21st-century author is as "finite" as a dead 13th-century one, though that's a problematic way of putting it for reasons Sparky mentions above. Even if the author is still alive and productive, as soon as you write a book on something he or she has written, your book because temporally "dead"; that is, that piece of your scholarship will not as a material object spontaneously update itself at any point (though you can revise it – a practice popularised by St Augustine, 4th c., incidentally). For all the availability of primary sources might increase the closer an author is to the present day, one will have correspondingly less to examine in terms of that author's reception. We have much more to go on in terms of Chaucer's reception than Fitzgerald's, for instance. (This statement assumes a. fairly popular and/or notorious and/or canonical authors and b. comparable levels of a. between any authors put into a.'s rubric, of course.)

Furthermore, if you compare scholarship on, say, Alexander Pope over the last couple of centuries, even scholars who focus on the same passages will not be saying the same things. I don't mean that they might all hypothetically be disagreeing with each other; but instead that some might be rather difficult to put into dialogue for the fact that ideologies, academic values, etc change with time. Or, short version: because times change. Even if the scholars sound like they'd agree (Milton's Satan IS evil!, they assert – but why do they assert it? Is this a good or bad thing? What does this mean? How do they write and argue it? What sources do they use? What are their political and social contexts, beyond being evidently disparate from each other?)

Compare a 19th-century book review with a 21st-century one, for instance. In the Victorian era, book reviewers were very much about plumbing the work under review for its moral promise. Today, not hardly.

A fair number of folks have theorized that the language we use affects how we think, to say nothing of what we can or cannot think. (Hi, Orwell.) No one has written sentences the way the 21st century writes sentences. And no one outside of the 17th century could un-selfconsciously write a sentence that belongs in the 17th century's style. This seems promising in terms of research originality.

Finally, the centuries of folks who've studied Virgil have not necessarily done so via gender theory, media studies, post/colonialism, etc etc. And I'm sure we're absent a pile of approaches previous scholars enjoyed.

All this to say: 4,000 Victorians aren't recycling the same old crap. Thank goodness.

[PaperChaser]

Addiction memoir sounds very cool..I'm thinking of Burrough's Junkie, Augusten Burrough's Dry, and more recently Mary Carr's Lit.

It makes sense to me that many people focus on the 21st century because there is new literature coming out all the time that needs to be analyzed and viewed through all these different lenses.

What I don't understand is how all these people who specialize, say, in Victorian lit, can be expected to publish articles and books in their field on a regular basis. There are 4,000 universities in the U.S. Let's say each one has at least one Victorian lit professor. Are there 4,000 professors of Victorian lit researching and publishing books in their specialty right now? Do they know what the others are doing, or are they reinventing wheels? True, there are many wonderful yet somewhat obscure authors from that period who have less written about them, but still. There are only so many primary sources from those years I would imagine. You are more likely to come up with something original if you focus on 20th/21st century authors, but each university only needs so many professors in that area.

I'm just curious about this. There are so many sharp people on this site, maybe somebody can fill me in.

I managed to get a BA and MA in English without taking a single Victorian class...I honestly hate it.(Except for the rhetoric of the corset of course.) But I can totally see why (most) people wouldn't want to research MY interests...they're weird, not readily marketable, and outside what most literate people consider literature. But that's cool. I met a girl recently who said she was doing research on the evolution of primary school textbooks from the colonial era in America on. Would I want to do this? Hell no. Is it an interesting project that I'd like to READ? Absolutely. I think the challenge in researching older works is finding new angles from which to view them. Believe it or not, there is still a LOT of cool stuff to do with 19th century or earlier works that have barely been touched. Could I think of them? No. I'm too pop-cultury, too pedestrian, and (honestly) too much of an "If I haven't lived in that century, it basically doesn't exist to me." My secondary school and undergrad were a little deficient compared to many academics. But I am SO glad other people can find buried treasures! I think the sometimes motley fabric of English programs is exactly what makes them worthwhile. I mean, I'd love to know why death row written statements aren't afforded copyright protection in the US while many letters written in prison are. There are always questions....the coolest thing is to meet someone whose work is super-interesting but something you would never have thought of yourself! That's why I show up, anyway

[mudgean]

I echo Pamphilia on this one.

Even if the scholars sound like they'd agree (Milton's Satan IS evil!, they assert – but why do they assert it? Is this a good or bad thing? What does this mean? How do they write and argue it? What sources do they use? What are their political and social contexts, beyond being evidently disparate from each other?)

Thanks speakwrite, there is a lot to think about here and in the rest of your post.

[Branwen daughter of Llyr]

I'll also echo Pamphilla and speakwrite.

There is plenty of scholarship and angles left, for Victorian, Restoration, Renaissance, and Medieval. Lots of unexplored angles, different contexts, little-researched texts. For example, in my particular sub-field, I have yet to find ANY serious research in the significance of the Welsh / Celtic otherworld in medieval Romance and how Celtic sensibilities (Arthurian stories were first Celtic stories) clash with Chivalry and courtly love sensibilities (French origin), and what very interesting tensions that creates within the text.

If you add looking at the texts through Narratology and Myth criticism, it's an unexplored treasure-trove. And thank god for that - otherwise, we'd all be out of a job tomorrow .