Words on a Page

Legacy: Landscape and Authenticity in the Literature of the American West At long last, my novel and thesis have been submitted to the examiners, and my viva is scheduled to take place on 18th April.  Dr. George Green from the University of Lancaster will be the external examiner, and Hugh Dunkerley from Chichester will be the internal examiner. Now that most of the work is complete, I look forward to sharing more of my research, here. Please stay tuned!

I’ve recently been re-reading Chief Joseph’s account of the Nez Perce War and subsequent internment in Indian Territory, and like many before me have been struck by the eloquence and power of his words. Whether this eloquence comes directly from Joseph himself or from the transcriber hardly seems to matter. The power behind the words is Joseph’s. I am also struck by the continuing relevance of his words and how they mirror so much of what we tend to think of as ‘modern democratic values’ and Christian teaching.  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Chief Joseph: Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt / In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat  (Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain) Our fathers gave us many laws, which they had learned from their fathers. These laws were good. They told us to treat all men as they treated us; that we should never be the first to break a bargain; that it was a disgrace to tell a lie; that we should speak only the truth; tha...

Someone has recently sent me a link to an interesting article that appeared in a January 2010 edition of Times Higher Education   which I thought was worth passing on to the other postgrad students out there.  In it, Tara Brabazon, Professor of Media Studies at the University of Brighton, discusses her role in preparing PhD students for submission of their thesis, and examining the work of other PhD candidates.   My teaching break between Christmas and the university's snowy reopening in January followed in the footsteps of Goldilocks and the three bears.  I examined three PhDs: one was too big; one was too small; one was just right.  Put another way, one was as close to a fail as I have ever examined; one passed but required rewriting to strengthen the argument; and the last reminded me why it is such a pleasure to be an academic. Read the full article:  How Not to Write a PhD Thesis by Tara Brabazon

I've been busy working on my novel the past few months, so haven't had any new literary research to add here.  Recently, though, while writing about farming in north Idaho, I've needed to get hold of some information linked to phases of the moon and favorable planting dates, and through the magic of the internet I was able to track down a copy of the 1981  Old Farmer's Almanac in South Dakota and have it posted to me here in the UK for a mere $9. I've also got my hands on  a Gurney's Seed Catalog from 1967, complete with an ad, torn from some magazine or other, for fishing trips to South Dakota's Great Lakes where you can find 'Northerns up to 35 lbs., walleyes to 12 lbs., and paddlefish to 90lbs!'  Research on the internet is fine for some things, but there's something about holding a hardcopy publication in your hands that is just so...so real .  Flicking through the yellowing pages of the almanac, past ads for "Apache" Arrowheads (t...

Discussion of Woody Guthrie's 'New Year Rulin's for 1942' have been all over the internet this week with some inferring that Woody's inclusion of hygiene matters (3, 4, 5, 9, 11) as an indication that the Huntington's disease which killed him twenty-five years later, at the age of 55, was already at work.  Maybe that's so.  Maybe not.  Maybe he was just so busy spilling words onto paper (the Woody Guthrie Archives contain the lyrics to nearly 3000 songs) that some of life's more mundane tasks occasionally got forgotten.   You can tell he's concerned about the way he's treated his family.  You can tell that, at the age of 30, he's thinking about his health - eat good , drink very scant if any - and about his spirit - don't get lonesome , stay glad , dream good , love , love , love - and about the need to take action and not waste time.  I see Woody's rulin's as a  to do  list, a way of taking small but meaningful steps to s...

This is the third annual review I’ve written since setting off on this journey.  One more should see me through to the end, at least as far as submitting my dissertation and preparing for the final viva.  The viva, the ultimate test of whether or not my work stands up to scrutiny, will come in just over a year’s time.  Not too much over, I hope, for I fear that my husband’s patience has its limits.  And so does mine.  After three years, we are both anxious to get our lives back.  Anxious to load up our bikes and find a nice quiet road to pedal down for a few months.  Route 66 sounds good, passing through abandoned Oklahoma towns on the way to the west coast.  So does the northern tier trans-America route as plotted out by the good people at the Adventure Cycling Association – from Bar Harbor , Maine all the way to Anacortes in Washington state.  Or better yet, their Lewis and Clark route which passes right through my hometown.  No d...

Here's an article from True West Magazine , published in February 2007. It lists some of the events of the frontier era of American history which the author points to as helping to shape not only the country but also the identity of the American people.  It's disappointing, but not surprising, that the list focusses almost exclusively on events that reinforce the heroic myth of Manifest Destiny and western expansion.  The one exception is The Battle of Little Bighorn - but even here the author manages to give a sympathetic account of Custer's defeat:  ‘…the weapons the soldiers were issued were single-shot Springfield trapdoors with copper casings that jammed, while many of the warriors had armed themselves with lever-action Winchesters.’   In effect what he’s saying is that the Indians, by being better armed, weren’t playing fair.   It makes a change, but I’m still not going to shed any tears over the 7 th Cavalry, I’m afraid. Gen. George Armstrong...