Since finishing my comprehensive exams, I've been thinking about my next big project: the dissertation. I've been thinking for years about this next step-- the agony of deliberating which texts to choose, the waiting process, the endless writing and editing. I'm certainly still worried about a few of those things (think: opening a blank page and knowing what it will become). But I'm also happy to say that I've started getting really excited about the prospect of writing the book I wished I could have read a few years ago. As I'm plotting out my chapters, I'm trying to imagine the type of text that would have given me a great leap forward in my comprehensive exams. There have been so many incredible books on Modernism, Ecocriticism, and Posthumanism coming out in the last few years. I'm thinking of McCarthy's Green Modernism, Scott's In the Hollow of the Wave, Head's Modernity and the English Novel, Bluemel and McCluskey's Rural Modernity in Britain. After reading these texts, I'm hoping to create something that can add to this conversation, a piece that can dig a bit deeper into the particular spaces and places that are so often visited in the era of the Naturist.
And, of course, I might need a trip to the UK one of these days to do some first hand research :)
