Friday, 29 May 2009

"Good passage in French on what dogs dream when awake."

That being what I wanted to name my contribution to the book event on Jenny Davidson's Breeding: A Partial History of the Eighteenth Century, not because it's relevant, but because it's my favorite entry in the Darwin notebook I cited in the post.  You're welcome to comment on the post here or at The Valve, but I don't want to reproduce it over here and risk confusing the search engines as to the location of the event.

May 29, 2009 7:46:55 PM | Academia, Dissertation, Evolution

3 Comments

Ahistoricality

As soon as you can get the dissertation published (pushing a bit?), you can just imagine the one-two punch: sell 'em as a box set!

Posted by: Ahistoricality | Friday, 29 May 2009 at 10:06 PM

SEK

I wonder if I can cajole someone into writing about 1801-1894, then we'd have a complete . . . pipe dream. Honestly, it's only now that I'm writing on Breeding that I'm even vaguely interested in my dissertation again. Not interested enough to look at it, mind you, but the words COLOSSAL EMBARRASSMENT don't flash before my eyes when I think about it now, so maybe in a few decades I can sit down with it and see if there's something publishable in there.

Posted by: SEK | Friday, 29 May 2009 at 10:37 PM

Ahistoricality

I remember that period, yeah.

Some people seem to get over that hump naturally, but I suspect you're more like me: the energy to dive back in will come from career pressure. Eventually, you remember that you're actually interested in this stuff and want your ideas to get some attention. Then, assuming you haven't completely lost the touch, taken on too much teaching, gotten involved in too many other professional and semi-professional projects and taken on too much personal baggage, you can get some good work done....

Best case scenario? You're completely unlike me.

Maybe you and Davidson could collaborate on the 19th century one. You could find a documentary filmmaker for your first meetings when you're negotiating methodology, sell tickets.... never mind.

Posted by: Ahistoricality | Friday, 29 May 2009 at 11:04 PM

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