Preliminary Questions in Preparing a Dissertation or Book Proposal

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For our English 573, American Moderns, class today.

Preliminary Questions in Preparing a Dissertation or Book Proposal

1. In a sentence or two, what’s the overall argument of this project? What’s the main point that you’re trying to make? (Think about this: how would you describe what you’re doing if you were talking on an elevator with someone for about 2 minutes?)

2. What one author or idea does this project absolutely have to include, and why?

3. What’s the gap in the scholarship that you’re trying to fill by writing about it? What are you saying that others haven’t talked about yet?

4. Why is it important?  (This is the “so what?” question that editors talk about.)

5. What other authors or topics are you planning to include, and why?

6. What’s the most exciting part of this project for you, or what fascinates you about this topic?

7. Is there anything you’ve written that can be incorporated into this project already?

8. Is there anything you’d like to include in this project but probably aren’t going to be able to include because of time, resources, etc.?

9. What theoretical framework(s) do you anticipate being most useful to you as you move forward with the project?

10. What critical works do you admire and might you consider as a model or template for your study?

Stephen Crane Panels at ALA 2014 in Washington, D.C.

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Friday, May 23, 2014

Session 10-B Culture and Context in Stephen Crane’s Work
12:40-2:00 p.m. 
Organized by the Stephen Crane Society

Chair: Paul Sorrentino, Virginia Tech

1. “Creative Destruction: Conflagration, The Newspaper Sketch, and Stephen Crane’s ‘The Monster,’”
Jennifer Travis, St. John’s University
2. “Tommie’s Resurrection: The Role of the Impoverished Child in Stephen Crane’s New York
Sketches,” Maggie Morris Davis, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
3. “Re-reading the Animals in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage,” Qizhi Shu, Xiangtan

Session 12-K Business Meeting: Crane Society
University/University of North Carolina, Wilmington

Session 11-H Culture and Context in Stephen Crane’s Work
2:10-3:30 p.m. 
Organized by the Stephen Crane Society

Chair: Benjamin F. Fisher, University of Mississippi

1. “’A Spector of Reproach’: Revisiting Figures of Shame in The Red Badge of Courage,” Keiko Nitta,
Rikkyo University/Yale University
2. “Stephen Crane’s Literary Journalism and the Limits of Liberalism in the Progressive Era,” Clemens
Spahr, Mainz University
3. “Structures of Feeling within Stephen Crane’s ‘The Blue Hotel,’” Robert Welch, Indiana University of
Pennsylvania

Session 12-K Business Meeting: Crane Society

3:40-5:00 p.m. 

New Whitman Digital Resource: Letters from his mother, Louisa Van Velsor Whitman

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From DIGAM:

   Wesley Raabe, an assistant professor in the Department of English at Kent State University, has edited the letters of Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, mother of the poet Walt Whitman. Her 170 letters and a new introduction have been published under the title “walter dear”: The Letters from Louisa Van Velsor Whitman to Her Son Walt on the Walt Whitman Archive, and they are now freely available to scholars and to the general public.

   The newly published letters feature digital facsimiles, authoritative transcriptions, dating, and annotation, and integration with Walt’s and other family members’ letters in the Whitman Archive section entitled “Correspondence.” Scholars for the first time will be able to read Walt Whitman’s letters alongside the replies of his mother, who was by far his most frequent correspondent. The edition also includes a new introduction with a biography. The letters and the introduction are online at http://www.whitmanarchive.org/biography/correspondence/index.html. 

 

   Walt Whitman described his mother as “illiterate in the formal sense,” but he also proclaimed his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, to be the “flower of her temperament active in me.” Louisa’s letters illuminate the most important relationship in the poet’s life and offer a rare glimpse into the emotional life of a working-class nineteenth-century American woman. Though she lacked formal education, her letters display verbal power and expressiveness, offering insight into the “family usages” that shaped Walt Whitman’s poetry.  

 

   The letters from Louisa Whitman to Walt span the period from just before the outbreak of the Civil War through a week before her death in May 1873. Her letters helped bind the Whitman family together during the disruptive years of the Civil War and early Reconstruction. The letters to Walt treat mundane everyday life and moments of great family sorrow, and they make incisive observations on Walt’s growing critical reputation and offer curt dismissals of lesser writers.

Edith Wharton Collection at the Beinecke Library to close temporarily beginning in April 2014

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From Gary Totten: 

Various Archival Collections to Close Temporarily Beginning in April 2014

Beginning in April 2014, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library will temporarily close various archival collections in preparation for a major building renovation scheduled to start in May 2015. In general, collections that are temporarily closed will be unavailable for six to eight weeks.

Researchers planning to visit the Beinecke should consult the library’s closed collections schedule beforehand to confirm the availability of desired materials. The schedule is currently subject to change, so researchers should check it frequently as they plan their visits.

Over the next year, the library will transfer about 12,000 cartons of collection material to an offsite shelving facility. This work requires the temporary closing of many of the library’s most important and frequently consulted archival collections. While temporarily closed, the collections will be unavailable for consultation in the reading room, classrooms, or for reproduction requests.

The temporary closings will be staggered throughout the year. Among collections slated to close in the spring of 2014 are the papers of Thornton Wilder, Eugene O’Neill, H.D., Langston Hughes, James Weldon and Grace Nail Johnson, and Edith Wharton. Collections to close in the fall of 2014 include the papers of Mable Dodge Luhan, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Variety review of 1918 film of The House of Mirth: “A distinctly rotten mess, well produced”

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katherineharrisbarrymore

Katherine Harris Barrymore, the Lily Bart of this film, from http://aestheteslament.blogspot.com/2012/01/well-said-lily-bart.html

As part of my current book project, Bitter Tastes: Naturalism, Early Film, and American Women’s Writing, I’ve been working with a lot of silent film resources, including reviews, in addition to writing more about Wharton.

Here’s a gem from Variety, August 23, 1918: a review of a  now-lost film adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth.  Excerpts:

It has been scenarioized by June Mathis for Metro, directed by Albert Capellani, photographed by Eugene Gaudio, all of it with rare excellence for the respective efforts, but the layout  is not a good one for a feature picture for the reason that the majority of the principals are a rotten set, not worth wasting time over, especially as none of them get their just desserts.  . . . And so on, etc., until you are led to believe that no one is on the level and it develops that everybody has the goods on everybody else.

At the middle of the fifth reel the aunt having died and left the girl penniless, she seeks work, doesn’t find it, she tries suicide and is rescued in time for a clinch with the lawyer.  The remainder of the cast are left to continue their incessant prowling for affairs with those of the opposite sex. 

A distinctly rotten mess, well produced. 

This was clearly an A-list production. June Mathis was a talented scenarist, famous for discovering Rudolph Valentino, and the French director Albert Capellani directed such notable films as Camille and The Red Lantern. 

Since Selden (“the lawyer”) arrives in time for a clinch rather than too late, the production delivered what W. D. Howells told her the American public always wanted to see: “a tragedy with a happy ending.” Also of interest to Wharton fans: the cast list includes “Bertha Trenor-Dorset” and “Augustus Trenor-Dorset,” a neat conflation of the Bertha and George Dorset and Judy and Gus Trenor of the novel.

“Rotten mess” though it might have been, it’s too bad that this is a lost film. Wharton would have been pleased, though, that Jolo, the reviewer for Variety, understood the “despicable” nature of the society she described.

Updates to the Edith Wharton Society Site

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Yesterday’s updates to the Edith Wharton Society site include a new membership directory at 

http://edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/membership/directory/

and the transfer of the minutes from business meetings to the new site at 

http://edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/membership/ews-business-2/

Happy 152nd Birthday to Edith Wharton

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ImageOn January 24, 1862, a daughter was born to Mr. and Mrs. George Frederic Jones of New York City.  Christened Edith Newbold Jones, she would grow up to be a great novelist and short story writer, not to mention poet, dramatist, social satirist, essayist, letter writer, gardener, interior designer, tireless director of French charities and reporter of conditions at the front during WWI, loyal friend, and a great if formidably intimidating hostess.

You can read more about her in the many books and articles that have been written about her since her death (head over to the Edith Wharton Society for some lists), but I just wanted to give her a shout-out here. (And to recognize that the term “shout-out” would have dismayed and amused her, and that she’d have given it to a vulgar character like Elmer Moffatt of The Custom of the Country or Lita of Twilight Sleep to show just how trashy they were.)

The short version of this post?  Go read Edith Wharton.  You won’t be disappointed.

Constance Fenimore Woolson (March 5, 1840-January 24, 1894)

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One hundred and twenty years ago this week, on January 24, 1894, an ailing Constance Fenimore Woolson fell to her death from a window in Casa Semeticolo, Venice. Lyndall Gordon’s A Private Life of Henry James contends that this was suicide, but I’m waiting for the publication of  Anne Boyd Rioux‘s new biography of Woolson to settle the matter.

In reading Gordon’s book at breakfast this morning, what struck me was not the manner of her death but Henry James’s reaction to it.  Distraught, he canceled his trip to attend the funeral (arranged by John Hay), yet some months later he moved to Venice, and, abandoning his usual rooms, rented hers for a few months.  Gordon reports that James felt comforted by Woolson’s strong presence there but also suggests that he had both wanted to avoid the publicity of his connection with her (hence not attending the funeral) and to court publicity through his extensive network, something that led to a “his heart is in the grave” piece in a newspaper about him.

MLA Rankings of American Authors

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At Commentary, a list of American writers ranked by numbers of publications devoted to them, with rankings from 1947 and apparently 1987. The author notes that “The reputations of Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Twain, Fitzgerald, and Frost have slipped badly. Poor William Dean Howells has fallen out of the top 25 altogether (to be replaced by Richard Wright).”

( 1.) Henry James (3,188 items) [+1]
( 2.) William Faulkner (2,955) [-1]
( 3.) T. S. Eliot (2,659) [+1]
( 4.) Herman Melville (2,579) [-1]
( 5.) Vladimir Nabokov (2,290) [+5]
( 6.) Ernest Hemingway (2,220) [-0-]
( 7.) Edgar Allan Poe (1,958) [-2]
( 8.) Toni Morrison (1,950) [+9]
( 9.) Nathaniel Hawthorne (1,751) [-4]
(10.) Walt Whitman (1,647) [-2]
(11.) Emily Dickinson (1,623) [+2]
(12.) Ezra Pound (1,620) [-3]
(13.) Willa Cather (1,482) [+5]
(14.) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1,326) [-3]
(15.) Wallace Stevens (1,122) [-1]
(16.) Edith Wharton (1,087) [+5]
(17.) Henry David Thoreau (1,076) [-5]
(18.) F. Scott Fitzgerald (1,002) [-3]
(19.) Flannery O’Connor (935) [+3]
(20.) Mark Twain (882) [-4]
(21.) John Steinbeck (823) [+2]
(22.) William Carlos Williams (772) [-0-]
(23.) Saul Bellow (706) [+2]
(24.) Richard Wright (670) [+2]
(25.) Robert Frost (661) [-5]

It’s an interesting relative measure, although it’s a little like ranking movies by opening weekend grosses or like those perpetual “Top 100” books/movies/songs lists that proliferate around the end of the year.

I’m a little unsure about the methodology: this morning’s MLA count of Edith Wharton references totaled 1557, only 10 of which were before 1947, so maybe dissertations and other pieces weren’t counted. But only five women writers and two writers of color made the list, which is a little surprising.  I wonder what a decade-by-decade count of these 25 authors would look like.

Apprenticeship Writings of Frank Norris: Index of essays

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If your research involves the work of Frank Norris, you’ve doubtless worked with Joseph R. McElrath and Douglas K. Burgess’s indispensable The Apprenticeship Writings of Frank Norris. It’s a superb volume, and it’s available free at Google Books.

The only thing lacking was an alphabetical list of essays. I made one several years ago and have posted it in .pdf form (typos and all) to the Frank Norris page at the Howells Society site and the American Authors site.