Welcome to the Prologue!

Hello and welcome to the scary world of ....dum, dum, dum! Deconstructing the DISSERTATION! It's a unique place in the virtual world - a spot where the past really DOES become prologue as we each work to synthesize years of education into one coherent piece of personal literature...

I will be using this blog as a way to muse, contemplate, and otherwise rip apart my dissertation ideas. My process is, of course, beginning with research, and most of this research is directly related to a grant that my committee and I are completing now for the National Endowment for the Humanities' (NEH) 2007 Digital Archive Initiative.

This blog will be an "invitation only" site - and I'll share ideas here with my peers and colleagues who are also going through this daunting rhetorical process. In fact, just today, Rochelle and I decided that we'd create our own "dissertation class." We are going to have monthly meetings at TWU's library on Friday mornings where we'll formally report to one another on our progress and otherwise fuss, cuss, and discuss the challenges, worries, and successes we encounter along the way. We figure that the BIGGEST challenge we'll face in writing the dissertation is the lack of structure and deadlines - so we'll create these ourselves, and in the process, we'll have the benefit of ongoing feedback with a colleague or two who share many of our same interests (and the benefit of almost identical PhD coursework); what riveting discussions we will surely have!

Yes siree! It'll be a select group made up of only the nerdiest of kids...