Midpoint update

Sorry for the long delay in posting. This quarter has just been steadily chugging by, and *lots* has been going on. I'll try to just go with bullet points:

- My fucking hard drive died, and I lost everything from the past year. Why, you ask? Well, funny thing: I used Time Machine religiously; I also had FileVault. Turns out, even when TimeMachine tells you it's backing up your hard drive, if you have FileVault, that's just a joke - you have to actually *log* *out* of your account in order for your files to *actually* get backed up. Haha Apple, jokes on me! Thanks for letting me know you weren't backing up all of my graduate school work all this time and giving me a false sense of security! Luckily, most of my grad work has been passed around in email format, so I didn't lose too much school work - *most* importantly, my most recent draft of my thesis was in an email to my adviser, so I'm fine with that - I just lost my annotated bibliography, which kind of blows, but that's just a matter of busy-work to recreate.

- I had a prospective MAPH student come visit for a weekend, which was fun. She had a good time, loved Juliano, and ended up committing to coming to UChicago next year.

- Then my cousin, Renée, came to visit for two nights and we had a good time strolling around Hyde Park, letting Juliano go crazy on campus and in the parks, and enjoying Hyde Park dining.

- THEN, my best friend from high school, Brittney, came to visit me last weekend - SO good, so fun! We haven't been able to just *hang* out in a *long* time, so we really enjoyed ourselves. Brittney made me stop being a hermit and romp around the city more, checking out downtown and a bit of the northern parts of Chicago. We at lots of delicious food, we bowled, she vchatted with Garfield and me (such a good sport!), we chased after trains, we had cocktails overlooking the Chicago skyline . . . good times :)

- And NOW, Garfield's on a plane to come visit for the weekend - FINALLY! This has been our longest haul apart this whole year. It has definitely been tough, but we've been doing really well with it and now we're very excited to see each other in person. Video chat definitely makes things easier, but you can't even make eye contact on it - you're both staring at the screen, so it's a weird looking at each other but not. In-person is way better.

- And in the midst of all this, I've been working hard at my Academic and Professional Writing class - very challenging, but so rewarding! It's giving me *way* better awareness and control of my prose! I'm basically writing parts of my thesis for the assignments and getting feedback on how to better write and present my argument - VERY useful! And then my WWII British Lit class is really great - the literature's great, the professor is great, and I have a group of girlfriends in the class with whom I do lunch after class most days. It's fun.

- THEN, there's my THESIS!! AH! It's been a lot of work, but it's been feeling rewarding rather than painful this quarter. I'm down to the final stretch, revising my full draft and getting it all properly organized and whatnot. My adviser is WONDERFUL, I'm REALLY enjoying working with her, and Nate (my preceptor) is great too, as always. So is my thesis workshop group . . . just lots of positives, all around. Anyway, for those who are interested, here's the brief sketch of my argument:

By focusing the critical analysis of Wise Blood on reacting to the question of redemption - arguing whether Hazel is legitimately redeemed or not - and specifically focusing on religious symbols in the text, critics leave O'Connor's novel in a reductive, exclusive critical circle. I aim to expand the analytical vocabulary to make her texts more accessible to a broader critical audience. By discussing the novel in terms of "freedom," I argue that the novels themes will be more relevant to a secular critical conversation while still being critically compatible with the religious conversations.

I want to argue that O'Connor brings complexity to the mystery of freedom in four big ways:
1. Critical of the idea of "liberation", i.e. a total release from power (here I'll present my Foucault "section")
2. Focusing on "liberation" creates a "transactional" approach to freedom (i.e. Hazel's debt)
3. Transaction is not compatible with love/practicing freedom through relationships (i.e. Enoch give-and-receive)
4. These distortions build into Enoch and Hazel's bizarre/comedic endings, asceticism/askêsis (Foucauldian terms) gives us a vocabulary to bring more subtlety into discussing their striking physical actions. Although their transactional approach is flawed, this still supports that Hazel and Enoch are focused on RECEIVING something - in this life (askêsis) rather than completely renouncing (asceticism). Hazel wants LIBERATION, while Enoch wants the POWER to claim/hold onto people.

That probably doesn't make a ton of sense in that form, but hopefully it gives you an idea. It's difficult to summarize succinctly and comprehensibly - I mean, my introduction is like 3-4 pages alone.

I'm excited about where it's going, everyone I talk to expresses enthusiasm for my topic and what I'm trying to do - my lector in my Writing class workshop said he's looking forward to reading more about my topic in subsequent assignments. Yay! :)

MEME is good too, busy because we have 3 concerts this quarter instead of 1 - and of course, our big main concert is the day before my final thesis is due - oh, AND I have a big Writing class assignment due that day too! UG!

Oh, and I'm still working on job applications. Searching and searching, applying and applying . . .

Anyway, in summary: things have been somewhat frantically busy, but kind of going smoothly and well at the same time. I'm happy, I'm thankful, and I'm going to have an Master's degree in 6 weeks!