What's Your Focus?

[dimanche0829]

I think I've seen a few threads where someone eventually ask about another's focus, so I figured we should have a thread for it!

I'm interested in studying the rise of the novel, but am especially interested in focusing on Laurence Sterne/Tristram Shandy.

Edited October 18, 2011 by dimanche0829

[HunkyDory]

I'm interested in 20th and 21st century poetry and poetics--especially Pound and his effects on contemporary and digital poetics.

[and...and...and...]

I'm interested in 18th Century studies and gay and lesbian fictions!

[Timshel]

My interests are in psychoanalysis, specifically trauma studies and literary testimony, in contemporary lit, especially in relation to collective and cultural trauma in ethnic literature.

I wish I could say that more succinctly.

[TripWillis]

African-American literature (particularly Queer Black Studies), dirty realism, literature and the environment (particularly the redefinition of the nature/human divide in the postmodern and globalized era).

[bdon19]

My focus is on novel theory and the history of the novel. For applications that require me to choose a period, I'm calling myself an 18th-centuryist, but I'm more interested in the development of the form from its rise in 1740 through the early Modernist period. I'm particularly interested in studying the novel from a Bakhtinian perspective, looking at the ways in which different types of novelistic discourse play with one another in a formal/generic sense as well as a socio-historical sense. I'm also interested in issues of canonicity regarding the history of the novel.

Edited to clarify my research interests and adjust it more towards what I plan to write in my SOP.

Edited December 23, 2011 by bdon19

[bfat]

I won't be applying until next fall (since I won't finish my MA until next December), but if all goes well, I plan to study 20th C American literature and film, with an emphasis on cultural studies and theory (bridging between film and literature--especially postmodernism, psychoanalysis, and feminist theory).

[Jbarks]

Late medieval literature, medievalism and popular culture, temporality, and psychoanalytic theory

[rems]

20th century Modernism -- specifically James Joyce -- and, gender theory, pop culture and digital humanities. Visual studies sometimes. Oh, and sometimes poetry... but only sometimes...

[dimanche0829]

20th century Modernism -- specifically James Joyce -- and, gender theory, pop culture and digital humanities. Visual studies sometimes. Oh, and sometimes poetry... but only sometimes...

I was just reading Joyce's raunchy love letters to Nora the other week. Explains so much...

[ComeBackZinc]

Vertical integration between high school and college writing pedagogy, college achievement for minority and low SES students, institutional critique, and research methodology.

[indalomena]

early modern science, music, cosmography, intellectual history, mathematics, poetry. They were polymaths, why can't I be one too? All this is bound up in a study of the imagination across the disciplines.

[perrykm2]

Trauma theory, postmodernism.

I like Delillo.

[Lord Horatio]

Postcolonial theory / Transnationalism and 20th Century English and Anglophone Literatures. Also Modernism.

[cquin]

Women & Gender Studies, Feminist Literary Theory, Psychoanalytic Theory, 20th-century American/British lit (and maybe a little late 19th-century lit, as well).

Anyone else here struggle to narrow down their interests? The aforementioned subjects are the most interesting to me and the ones in which I have the most experience, but there are still so many other, very unrelated topics I'd love to look into!

Maybe this is why I'm better off getting my MA first...

[Timshel]

Trauma theory, postmodernism.

I like Delillo.

I did my Master's thesis on trauma and DeLillo.

[Grunty DaGnome]

I did my Master's thesis on trauma and DeLillo.

I'd vote for him as greatest living writer.

[cquin]

I'd vote for him as greatest living writer.

DeLillo has always been on my list of "Authors I Will Get Into One Day Soon." You have now piqued my interest. Which book would you recommend starting with?

[Two Espressos]

DeLillo has always been on my list of "Authors I Will Get Into One Day Soon." You have now piqued my interest. Which book would you recommend starting with?

I know very little about DeLillo, but I was told that White Noise is a good starting point. It's not nearly as lengthy or as complicated as Underworld or his other hefty tomes. I read White Noise last year and loved it. It's extremely funny and profound, not necessarily in that order though.

[cquin]

I know very little about DeLillo, but I was told that White Noise is a good starting point. It's not nearly as lengthy or as complicated as Underworld or his other hefty tomes. I read White Noise last year and loved it. It's extremely funny and profound, not necessarily in that order though.

Thanks! I'll check that one out. Though lord knows I won't have time for lesiure reading until around February...

[TripWillis]

I know very little about DeLillo, but I was told that White Noise is a good starting point. It's not nearly as lengthy or as complicated as Underworld or his other hefty tomes. I read White Noise last year and loved it. It's extremely funny and profound, not necessarily in that order though.

I gotta come out and be the one to say I hated White Noise, but it's definitely representative of a "type" of literature I don't like, so I wouldn't let that stop anyone else... I also don't care for Pynchon *ducks people throwing objects* hey! Easy!

[Two Espressos]

I gotta come out and be the one to say I hated White Noise, but it's definitely representative of a "type" of literature I don't like, so I wouldn't let that stop anyone else... I also don't care for Pynchon *ducks people throwing objects* hey! Easy!

Out of curiosity and despite the risk of derailing this thread, why did you hate White Noise? I've never met someone who disliked it.

As for Pynchon, a beautiful, unread copy of Gravity's Rainbow perennially sits on my bookshelf. If only I had the time to read it. . .

Edited October 29, 2011 by Two Espressos

[truckbasket]

As for Pynchon, a beautiful, unread copy of Gravity's Rainbow perennially sits on my bookshelf. If only I had the time to read it. . .

It's a beast, but it kicks White Noise's ass on every level. The first 150 or so pages are an uphill battle, but then it levels out a bit.

[Timshel]

The Crying of Lot 49 is amazing. Also, if you like Pynchon, read David Foster Wallace!

[TripWillis]

Out of curiosity and despite the risk of derailing this thread, why did you hate White Noise? I've never met someone who disliked it.

As for Pynchon, a beautiful, unread copy of Gravity's Rainbow perennially sits on my bookshelf. If only I had the time to read it. . .

I found White Noise to be a very smarmy book, but the thing is, I think that's what people like about it. I just can't digest so much character scorn and pretentious humor over the course of a whole book. But, I have some weird principles when it comes to my personal taste that everyone else should just ignore: I don't like to read about rich/aristocrat people, I don't like to read about writers, I don't like to read about the intelligentsia, I don't like overbearing amounts of pop culture references, I don't like an assumption of the reader's leftism (although I am left), and I don't like archetypal female characters. *phew* nice to get all that off my chest.

Oh, and I also have a tough time with political commentary on consumerism in books because rarely do I find that the author (no matter how good they are at the act of writing) has a particularly nuanced view of the issue.

Edited October 29, 2011 by TripWillis