Monday, July 21, 2008

Hello

Hello Everyone. I'm glad that such a space exists for us as we dissertate. I am writing on national and state poets laureate, their works, poetics, and community outreach/cultural value.

I've written a first draft of my prospectus and am revising because I still don't have a hard-hitting thesis that covers all chapters. I know everything I want to say; I just don't know how to position what I have to say in an argument.

I'm working through how to write everything about my diss before I've written it :).

The strategy I'm going to use tonight when I get home is to ask myself global question after question. Then I'll see which I should turn into an answer & then maybe I'll end up with a thesis.

Best to everyone's writing,

Toni

1 comment:

Billie said...

Hi, Toni, and welcome to DBC! Your diss topic sounds so very interesting! Are you working with all states or just a certain geograhic region? Current laureats or former? Oh, tell us more!

To answer your questions quickly (and these are, of course, only my opinion), you might chat with your advisor about how tied you are to the prospectus once you write it. For some, me for example, I had a good idea about what I wanted to write, and that's what my prospectus said. However, as I began to write, my central claim began to shift, and now that time has passed and my theoretical frame has been, um, reframed, I'm even a further off that initial course. For my advisor/committee, that was fine. In fact, he told that me that's very common.

Secondly, what kind of research questions are you answering? That's always a good place to start.