In terms of where I'm coming from: my first area, drawing on my primary interest in early modern drama, consisted of a bunch of plays and secondary work on theater as a socially and economically engaged art form (a marathon beginning with L.C. Knights's Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson and ending with Jean Howard's recent Theater of a City). I ended up with a rationale focusing on the social function of stage props. Adam was my advisor (which put me on AFK's shit list for awhile, until I explained my reasons, which I won't rehearse here. We're doing fine now. He only nodded off a few times during the exam). My second area pertained to non-dramatic lit & early modern social life, theories of consumption, and consumer culture. Joe had me reading diverse kinds of primary texts--anything from a year in Pepys's diary to cookery books to temperance tracts to Jonson's "Inviting a Friend to Supper." When constructing the lists, I suspected that I ultimately wanted to do a project on dramatic representations of food and drink, so I used the second area to look at food history, food studies, and cultural materialist methodologies to see if they were indeed of interest. And they are.
Now that I've come out on the other side (pause, sigh of relief), I'm trying to put together a project focusing on recreational consumption. Such forms of consumption are happening conspicuously on the stage (1 and 2 Henry IV, The Fair Maid of the West, The Honest Whore, The Dutch Courtesan, Bartholomew Fair are a few examples that I'm interested in), just as drama is itself a new form of recreational consumption in London, and it's going on in the taverns and bawdyhouses around the theaters. So far I can sort of locate specific kinds of consumption and spaces within which class and economic status are negotiated through alimentary terms and materials. There are, for example, tensions around homosocial conviviality in the tavern in contrast to the domestic economy of the home. And I keep wondering about the connection(s) between consuming theater and consuming other things. I still have a lot of work to do when it comes to putting forth a big idea and dividing up the material in a way that will help me talk about that bigger issue. I've only begun to think about an organizational scheme (if there's a chapter on taverns, which I know I want, do I write on other social spaces? Author-based chapters? Issues of genre? Heaven help me, some kind of chronological study?) I do know I need to move beyond arguing "these things were met with deep anxiety" or "there was an explosion in the availability of these kinds of consumable materials." Those angles have been pursued to death. Just a matter of finding out where else I can push the conversation...
GEMCS is coming up next month and I'm giving a paper on the materials of Jacobean drinking culture in Middleton and Dekker's 1 Honest Whore. (David Swain put together a panel on the politics of drink). Hopefully by then I can at least be able to say something like "this brief reading of the play is an interesting iteration of a broader concern involving X, Y, and Z..." where X, Y, and Z are clearer than what I've described above. And I know sharing time--and drinks--with Dave will be really helpful for my thinking.
So that's where I'm at. I'm already gaining a great deal from your posts, and I've read the first few chapters of Joan Bolker's book, which have been enlightening. I look forward to the discussions!
2 comments:
Congrats on passing exams! It sounds like your areas dovetailed really well. It also sounds like you have an interesting project ahead; I'm eager to find out more as you go along. I think the idea of pushing the conversation is one of the most difficult in our field. It's absolutely necessary in every project, and it always feels like it just ends with "isn't that cool?!?" I've found the questions that Booth, Columb, and Williams suggest in their "Questioning Your Topic" section in Manual for Writers of . . . Dissertations extremely helpful in moving toward finding a "so what?" (Not that I've found one yet.) All the best.
Z, happy to hear you're beyond the exams, and even more happy to see you here. The one thing I've learned in all of this is organization, organization, organization. I'm finding I have to type out my notes for later use and have a way to manage all that material so that I can find it later. The more you start playing with filing the material away, the more you'll begin to see patterns or different organizational possibilities and what opportunities they afford.
The project sounds fun and a way to shoot right into cultural studies. I wouldn't know how to suggest a way to organize, but I can tell you from experience author based chapters seem much more manageable. My diss is organized by genre, and the unwieldy borders of that scheme is giving me fits. Speaking of consumption, I spent last year worrying about consuming everything within that category instead of relying on the principle that if you analyze a piece well, the payoff for the whole is readily applicable.
I'll see you at GEMCS as well. There we can seriously discuss drinks and culture.
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