Drafts and Draughts

It has been an exorbitant amount of time since I last posted; two months, not to put too fine a point on it.  But these two months have been busy.  I've finished my work for the semester and so now, in the few days before I return to Texas, I spend my time in coffee shops around Belfast reading and thinking about this first term.

I've submitted well over 11,000 words to my supervisor, but I can guarantee that my first chapter at differentiation, let alone in my final dissertation, will bear little resemblance to this semester's 11,000.  That doesn't bother me at all; nor indeed should it.  At this point in time, I've given to Sinéad my essential arguments regarding both Maria Edgeworth and Sydney Owenson, but I've not engaged with theory and criticism to the extent that I will need to.  Moreover, I can tell you there are huge aspects I've not yet addressed.  For example, Edgeworth's Ormond relies heavily upon the development of travel across Ireland and Britain that resulted from the postal service.  When discussing my first draft on Edgeworth, my secondary supervisor offhandedly mentioned that I should find a history of the post service in Ireland and England.  Of course, this might not add more than a footnote in the entire dissertation, but it is relevant information.  And in Owenson, I still need to read The Novice of St. Dominic, but this book has not been reprinted and is held only at the National Library of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin's Ussher Library, and the British Library.  During the early part of January, I'll head down to Dublin and spend a few days reading it.

All I can say at the moment is that I've loved the work I've done so far, but there's so much more to do.  Sinéad and I have joked that I could easily do my entire dissertation on Edgeworth and Owenson.  The problem with that is, as Luke Gibbons pointed out, that would make me a Romanticist.  And, again according to Gibbons, the most interesting research that needs to happen is in early twentieth-century Irish writing, which has been my emphasis since my B.A. at Creighton.  But I'm beginning to realise how much a dissertation is like Jenga.  You try to figure out where you can pull things and place more, without upsetting the very delicate balance.

But enough talking shop, sort of.  I mentioned Luke Gibbons, who is a lecturer at NUI Maynooth and former lecturer at the University of Notre Dame.  I met him at the Ireland and Modernity Conference at Queen's University Belfast the second weekend of November.  Prof. Gibbons was one of the keynote speakers and I was one of many who contributed a paper to the conference.  It was not only a great networking opportunity, where I met many leading scholars like Bonnie Kime Scott and Fintan Cullen, but it was a phenomenal weekend for our PhD cohort.  There are twenty new PhD students beginning this year in the School of English and about ten of us hang out regularly.

It's a great group of diverse people.  We do try to avoid talking about literature all the time, especially in pubs, but it's comforting to know that if I need to, there's a group who are willing and able to have those conversations.  But more often than not, we talk about anything else.  Cat, a friend of mine from Omagh by way of Waterford, and I spent last night talking about Kanye's and rap's position in cultural studies.  And then Emily, a friend from Sligo, and I had a long conversation that ended with me getting yelled at for not having enjoyed the Breakfast Club.  Adam, who's studying John McGahern, and I have been planning the ultimate road trip around Ireland, focusing on hitting the Galway races in July and the Cork Jazz Festival in August.

Early on in PhD training, Eamonn, who directed the M.A. programme here at QUB, told us these people are our first professional connections, our first and closest colleagues.  Despite knowing I'll sound unbelievably cheesy and cliche, I know it's true.  These friends, both old and new, have made each draft and all the draughts an extraordinary experience.  Sometimes it hits me how lucky I am to be paid to do what I love.  I don't know where this leads or indeed how long it will last after my viva, but I don't plan on letting go of this any time soon.