At the beginning of the month, I shared what would be the first of two dissertation updates for April. As promised, here’s the second installment. Drafting Chapter 5 During the first half of the month, I wrote the initial draft of Chapter 5. As I prefer to do, I worked on the dissertation in the… Continue reading Dissertation Work, April Update, Part II
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How St. Francis Has Helped My Dissertation
Before I launch into today’s post, I have to admit that the title is a bit of a misnomer. St. Francis hasn’t directly interceded on behalf of my dissertation (I’m a lapsed Catholic at best), but the writing I did about him in college has definitely had an impact. But hey, the title got your… Continue reading How St. Francis Has Helped My Dissertation
Flowering Trees
One of the things that I love about living in the Williamsburg area is that the seasons are so distinct from one another. Whereas the shifts between seasons in Roswell were subtle, a blush of green on the ground or in the trees after a rain, or, more often than not, a blast of wind… Continue reading Flowering Trees
Painted Seed Storage Box
Container gardening season has commenced, and during the past few weeks I’ve been getting the patio ready for a new year of vegetable-growing adventures. I pulled out my buckets and filled them with the soil I’d stored and saved from last season, refreshing it with compost and other nutrients. After noticing that a squirrel or… Continue reading Painted Seed Storage Box
Dissertation Work, April Update, Part I
Last week I discussed the ongoing research I’ve been doing on the VMFA Artmobile. This week we’ll take a look at how I distilled that research into something manageable for Chapter 5. Given all the rich details I was finding in the archive, I decided that I needed to take a macroscopic view of my… Continue reading Dissertation Work, April Update, Part I
Dissertation Work, March Update
Last month I started telling you about all the things I’ve been learning about the VMFA’s initial artmobile program. Let’s see what I’ve been doing since then (spoilers: it’s a lot). The first thing I did was finish going through the archival documents I had photographed. I had about 100 or so document clusters left… Continue reading Dissertation Work, March Update
Symposium Reflections
When I was checking LinkedIn the other day I noticed that my former supervisor from the Archives and Special Collections at Lake Forest College had recently posted something. We’ve kept in touch since I graduated, so I decided to check it out. It turned to be a post about the College’s annual Student Symposium, a… Continue reading Symposium Reflections
Mountains and Birds on the Cabinet Doors
One of the challenges of home ownership is reconciling your improvement ambitions with the realities of your finite time and (especially) budget. In our house, one of those projects has been the cabinets. When Brandon and I first bought the place, we imagined what it would be like to replace them, as they definitely contributed… Continue reading Mountains and Birds on the Cabinet Doors
Roswell Revisited
“It’s nice to see you again too,” I grumbled as yet another dust-clotted gale threatened to shove me off the airport walkway. Who needs expensive facial treatments, I thought sardonically, when you can get sand-blasted exfoliation for free, courtesy of New Mexico’s relentless spring winds? I’d just flown into Roswell, where the gusts had become… Continue reading Roswell Revisited
#CAA2023
Last November, I posted about the conference goals I’ve been checking off since starting the American Studies Program at William & Mary. That post focused on my experiences at the ASA annual meeting, but that’s not the only large conference I’ve been wanting to attend. Last week, I accomplished my goal of going to another… Continue reading #CAA2023