As the semester winds down

Hi, All.

I hope that you're all finishing up the semester, and it's going smoothly. It's great to see that some are finishing up, too!

I think that the stars have been in alignment for me lately. I did finish my prospectus, defended it, and got it filed. I went through 15 distinct drafts, plus a bunch of smaller changes. My topic is still basically the same, except I've got new research sites, and new data to collect. So, this summer should be very busy--and exciting. Unfortunately, with so little time, I could not come up with a good title for the study, but I can still work on it for the diss. defense, I guess. The new title is "Classical rhetoric as a theoretical lens for understanding multimodal composing practices at four sites of digital composing." I'm still working to bring multimodal studies into conversation with classical rhetoric, and gesture and embodiment will still be important. My revised research questions are:

1. How is the female body constructed in digital multimodal environments?
2. How can a classical rhetorical reading help to account for multimodal composing?
3. What are the limits to constructions of the female body, or representing material bodies in digital multimodal environments?

Thanks to everyone for their support through this, and for sharing examples of your prospectuses, too. Have a great Mother's Day, or at least a nice day off.