This is a beautiful description of your dissertation. I think it will strike the review committee, as it struck me, as thorough, sophisticated, and, for the most part, accessible and clear to the non-specialist. The prose is elegant and richly textured, and the tone is appealing and persuasive. The project definitely sounds interesting and important. Its background and purpose develop smoothly within and between paragraphs. My suggestions for specifying and/or expanding on ideas fall into two categories: (1) additions the review committee might expect, given the instructions, and (2) questions I have as an "academic" reader.

(1) I do think that more specifics on your goals, and on the larger significance of the specific issues in English studies to which your project responds, are in order. At the end of the first full paragraph on pg. 3, you mention that, once you have obtained a faculty position, you "can contribute to these conversations, which are shaping the face of education and the role of the university in contemporary America in crucial ways." I think the review committee will (as it should) assume that you will meet your goal of becoming a professor. Thus, they may want to know how, exactly, you'll contribute, as a professor. For example, you suggest, at the end of para 2 on pg. 1, that your study situates you to "look to new models of curricular reform in literary studies." When a professor, will you develop and implement new pedagogical models? What might your future classroom and curriculum look like, then? How would it compare to your classroom and curriculum now?

It might help to make your experience and goals more concrete by relaying an example (an anecdote from your classroom?) of when/how the current curriculum has proven inadequate. You also might explain more fully the ways in which the research you cite has revealed the inadequacies of the curriculum. For example, what does/would it mean for lit studies to "ground its critique of unequal social relations," mentioned in the same para? Why/How is "'multiculturalization' of the canon" seen, by the scholars footnoted, here, as "an inadequate model of progressive curricular reform"? What's wrong with multiculturalism?, the committee might ask. How does it threaten English?

I think emphasizing and elaborating on your argument, also in this para, that this "mode of curricular reform not only constrains the ways that students can understand authors and texts, but also oversimplifies the complexities of identity formation and representation," is in order. This is so beautifully put. However, I may get what you mean by this more than the committee will, and I think arguing more forcefully and specifically the real damage that you think "multiculturalism," as defined in the university today, does, would help to clarify your politics and the urgency of your project. And you might use a more detailed explanation of how you would define and teach "multiculturalism," identity, authors, and texts differently than is en vogue at present, to not only help define and address the current and future crises and challenges English faces but also elaborate on your own professional goals.

Other places in your text where you might address this: in first para on p. 2, what's at stake "as English departments attempt to modernize and retain their institutional salience in the changing contemporary university"? And what's driving this change (what makes it a kind of 'modernizing')? Who/what is English trying to be salient to? You might, here, briefly introduce a general reader to such terms/events as the "canon wars" or "culture wars" (actually, I've never been sure what the latter phrase means, exactly), or even, if possible, (perhaps in a footnote) E.D. Hirsch's "conservative" idea of "Cultural Literacy" and the reactions to it (do you think that's relevant?), and, most importantly, explain your politics and goals in relation to these.

A key explanation of the state of the field and your place in it comes up in the last para of Part II, pg. 3: "While 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism' have become buzzwords in most educational institutions, it is imperative that educators keep these concepts from losing real meaning by maintaining a critical pedagogical focus on how they play out in curricula." This is wonderfully put. But I wonder if, again (or earlier), you might give a concrete example of "how they play out in curricula." Also, bc this strikes me as such a key claim in your argument, you might move it up to pg. 1.

Finally, in reading your proposal, I wondered if the committee might wonder why you've picked the turn of the 20th c to compare to the turn of the 21st c. I think you touch on your reason for this when you suggest that the former period witnessed "the creation of middle-class reading practices." Can you make this "creation," and any explanations for it, more explicit? Also, I think you've said outside this proposal that the turn of the 20th c saw an unprecedented explosion of autobiographical texts. Is this correct? If so, can you emphasize it more, here? How does the latest autobiographical rise compare to the earlier one? Is it, as you suggest, here, but might clarify, that the latest one is in the university (is it in the popular book press too?) while the earlier was only in the publishing market?

(2) Questions I have that I'm not sure will concern the reviewers are: Do the middle-class readers you study have a particular racial or ethnic identity? Do you argue that these readers' race/ethnicity was constructed by and/or against that represented in autobiographies written "from cultural locations outside of their middle-class readership," as you put so beautifully in para. 3, pg. 2? I get, from this para, that your study looks at "ethnic" writers, but do you also, or not, research "ethnic" readers? On this note, perhaps saying more about "passing," as you ask at the end of the first para, would help to clarify and expand on how your project approaches race and ethnicity.

That's all for me in writing. I look forward to talking about this proposal in person tomorrow. Again, I think you've done a fantastic job of articulating your project. The above questions and comments are simply meant to help add specificity and "newness of you-ness" to this proposal-- which I struggle a great deal with in my own.

Lauren

So far I’ve only had the chance to look at your application proposal. It’s made me excited to read more of your work—you are thinking about so many complex, intersecting, and important ideas and questions. I love how you are bringing together boxing, race, and film (class might be something else to add, eventually). I hope you get the fellowship! I’ll look forward to reading the chapter you write on this topic. I think you are correct to focus on ‘jargon-free’ ‘layperson’ writing (often, unfortunately, these fellowship committees do not seem to reward complexity and multi-layered thought). There were a few spots where I thought you could make your writing a bit more clear—primarily, the amount of description could be reduced, and there could be more attention paid to what you doing now/what you are going to do with the fellowship money. I’ll just go through and note by page number some things I noticed . . .

1/ In the summary, I didn’t understand the meaning of this phrase: ‘how the projects informing the development of these film forms are inextricably bound.’ Which projects? What do you mean by ‘development’? Are the projects bound with each other or with the ‘film forms’? I think making a more straightforward case for why you are connecting these film forms with the 1910 fight would strengthen this section (and you could do it in one sentence).
Also in the summary, you might consider either clarifying or taking out the word ‘frame’ in the last sentence. For me, I read ‘frames of early film’ here as the contextual or historical situation of early film. But then on page 2, you speak about the literal frame in relation to the boxing ring (I really love this connection you’re making between shapes of the ring and the film frame!!!!!). I got confused about how you were defining ‘frame’ in this project, is it the literal frame or the contextual frame, or something else, or both?

2/ When I first read ‘domestic strife,’ I assumed you were talking about home-domestic, not national-domestic.
The topic of masculinity comes up here for what seems like the first time after it’s mentioned in your title. From your summary and your introductory statements, I didn’t get that this was going to be an explicit part of your project. The Jack London section on page 3, while fascinating, also felt like a new topic that wasn’t mentioned in the summary/beginning.

3/ At the top of the page, I thought you could provide a clearer statement about your position on the Johnsons’ primitivism/racism. The quotes you include are really offensive. I’m wondering, how exactly are you going to deal with these quotes? What is your approach? The statement about film that concludes the paragraph does not seem directly related to the quotes, but it does make a strong statement about your project as a whole. Perhaps one option would be removing the quoted material and focusing on the film element, then you could save your in-depth interpretation of the quotes for your paper.
Regarding the Jack London paragraph, I think less description of what London did and more about what you are going to do with his writing/persona would bolster your case further.

4/ Usually the people who read these things seem to want to hear about exactly what you are going to produce by the end of the fellowship term. Will you complete one diss chapter, or two, or a chapter and an introduction, or something else? Will it be both a publishable journal article which you can submit to a peer-reviewed publication as well as a dissertation chapter (yes!)? Is this fellowship absolutely necessary for you do the best work possible (yes!)? I think it’s important to emphasize that you need this money and that you are extremely organized about how you will use your time (even if, in reality, you’re not). Another option for talking about archival materials would be to mention them in the body of your essay—in the first paragraph, for example, you could mention the Edison National Historic Site materials which you need in order to deal successfully with the Jeffries-Johnson fight.

I think this is a sophisticated, beautifully written dissertation chapter. Since being required to read Heart of Darkness multiple times in high school and college, I have refused to look at it again. But after reading your essay I am interested in returning to it! You do such a great job of explaining other critics’ interpretive logic and pointing out the strengths and flaws in it. For example, on page 5, your presentation of Firchow’s argument and the logical failures in it is exceptionally clear and convincing. Your explanations throughout the essay are consistently well-argued.

I was struck by how much this feels like a ‘real’ dissertation chapter—it seems to fit into a larger, interconnected project about ideology, and supports a particular aspect of your overall statement. On page 8 you mention your dissertation ‘which has an explicit political purpose’—at this point in reading your work, I’m not quite sure what this purpose is. Perhaps it would be clear in the context of the dissertation as a whole, but if I were reading this essay in a journal or an anthology, this would be confusing for me. (I think it would actually sound stronger to imagine the dissertation as a draft for a book and therefore not refer to it as a ‘dissertation.’) If you plan to prepare this to send to a journal, you might want to think about sketching out more about your argument about ideology for your readers.

In terms of the main argument in this essay, I was somewhat confused about how exactly you were entering into this debate about Conrad. There were points where I felt there were excellent assertions of your thesis, particularly on pages 9, 10, and 11, but, for me, these were clouded by the engagement with the academic work on Conrad. Until page 9 or so, the essay felt at times to me like a survey of Conrad scholarship—although I really admire your ability to engage in depth with other critics, I kept wondering, How does your position on the text move out of current scholarship and lead us into a ‘new’ conversation about Conrad? I think you do an excellent job of showing that H of D is a ‘crucial text to contend with for postcolonial studies’ (p.1) and that understanding comes about with ‘positions that untie race and imperialism’ (p.3). But I’m curious to find out more about the particular stakes of your ‘contention’ and your ‘position.’ Again, there are places here where I do see a clear overall argument at work, I would just love to see more of this, especially at the beginning of the essay. The question of how much ‘outside’ critical work to include and how to incorporate it is something I’m thinking about a lot right now (as you know from reading my essay), and so I’d be interested to hear more about your perspective on this issue.

The end of the essay felt a bit abrupt to me, as did the move to discussing workers around page 18—perhaps this could be a place to do some additional expansion and elaboration. I am so impressed with your work in this chapter, and am truly intrigued to learn more about your ideas and to read more of your diss. Thank you for sharing this!

Becky

Modernism and Colonialism (Duke UP, 2007)
http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=18692&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=12467
(Maddy: Includes an essay on Conrad titled "Disorientalism" by Michael Valdez Moses.)

Bad Modernisms (Duke UP, 2006)
http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=18692&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=13692
(Jessie: Includes an essay on Filipino American writer Carlos Bulosan. Sounds like his writing moves between fiction and autobiography.)

First off, let me just say that I think this is excellent. I know I heard you present most of this, but your paper really comes together, and you present a clear narrative and intellectual interrogation of so much. You write and transition from one idea to another very well and I feel like I’m in capable hands. One of the many things that I admire about this essay is the magnitude of scholarship that has gone into it. You present here a tremendous amount of data that you’ve brought together and then reflected on with a great deal of care, and it shows. The notes in of themselves are incredibly informative, and are convincing displays of hard work. The story of the daguerreotypes is of course fascinating, but I also love the way that you read these objects and their reception. For instance, your point about the “actuality� of the time Poe would have to be sitting for his daguerreotype vs. the way it was talked off (p2) is smart and insightful. Similarly, you find effective gaps in the way Poe’s dress is talked about and explain clearly and succinctly what these gaps tell us about the construction of Poe’s image (pun!).
I have, of course, line edits, and comments on specific parts of the paper, but I wanted to bring your attention to a couple of particular things:

a) I hate to say this, but one of the most significant areas that I think needs work might stem from all the work that you’ve done. What I mean is this: I feel that a lot of your essay centers around the way that others have talked about Poe, about aura, about sculpture, about press photographs etc. Some of this is obviously unavoidable, since I understand that you’re doing some important (sorry for this next word) metacommentary. However, I feel that there are a lot of names in here that aren’t really individualized to any extent. The strongest examples of this are Barthes and Benjamin who’re really invoked in a timely way, but not that effectively. You tend to use inline quotes a lot, which is fine, but which also detracts from cohesive, rounded, and “complete� understanding of ideas. For example, on page 8, Barthes is brought up quickly, quoted minimally, and explained almost not at all. I think that, in general, you need to spend some more time with these thinkers. Elaborate for us, if you will, what these thinkers are trying to say about important concepts, how they see these concepts, and how you see them. It will allow, I think, for a stronger presentation of your own voice and ideas that feels like is being absented here. I want to stress, I don’t think that you’re actually letting other people do the talking—this essay feels, to borrow one of your concepts, original. However, by not setting up quotes and analyzing them/their authors effectively, you, inadvertently I feel, give off the impression of doing less “thinking� than you actually have done.

b) In general, you’re composing a very complicated essay here and depend on a matrix of complex notions. To make this even more effective than it already is, I feel that you need to explain your concepts a little bit more. In my line edits, I question your fleeting assertion on the “cinematic� nature of the reception of Poe’s daguerreotypes. I understand that this is part of the paper that you have not yet written out completely, but it still warrants a beat or so more—just a line or so to explain what it means to receive something cinematically. Similarly, I’m not exactly sure why Dimmock’s letter to the editor is “odd� or, for that matter, how you understand Barthes’s concepts of connotation and denotation to work (and to what end) in Poe. I feel that point a) might address this, but I do think that your work seems hurried somehow, and that a careful and insightful explanation of what you mean will address this impression of haste. The good news, I feel, is that it would result in more pages!

c) Your writing, as I’ve mentioned, is top-notch, and you effectively deploy v. complicated ideas. However, in a couple of places, you use long, complicated sentences that seem to be a little inverted in their syntax. I feel like there’s an argument to be made for doing this—your ideas are complex, and therefore your sentences must reflect this complexity. However, I think that simpler and more direct sentences, though not always prettier, are always clearer, and though concealing your subject is an interesting approach, it can very easily lead to confusion. I also feel that there are (a very few) moments in which you resort to “gradspeak� whereby we tell our audience what we think we’re going to argue, instead of presenting them with the confidence that our analyses will do the work. Like I said re: Becky’s chapter, I think we need to work on moving away from those moments altogether.

All in all, I thought this was really wonderful, and I am truly impressed. This bodes so well for your dissertation at large, which I am (now more so than ever) excited to read. Well done!

A couple important questions I thought might transition nicely into discussion of Lauren’s upcoming paper were in Jessie’s response to my paper—I think a few of us are grappling with these issues and, although I don’t know how to answer them yet, I’m keeping them in mind. I’m copying Jessie’s questions here:

On my linking of textile laborers with avant-garde artists: “Firstly, why is this link important for you to make? What’s at stake in terms of our understanding of Albers as an artist and/or the currents you’re tracing in modernist thought?� I’d add, what does it mean to link figures across temporal (and national, other kinds of) boundaries? Lauren’s project connects the Gothic to the modern, Jessie’s connects early 20th c. thought to the contemporary classroom . . . Why are we doing this??!?!?!?

On Albers’s conservatism: “What does it mean to ‘reclaim’ a writer/artist who has been cast as conservative in the name of a more progressive politics? What is gained and risked/obscured in such a move?�

In addition to these questions there are a couple things I’m curious about in terms of academic writing. One has to do with the use of theory, and the other with the use of “I.�

Because I felt the main thrust of my Albers paper was to show the importance of taking her seriously as a theorist, I was reluctant to devote much space to other theorists. Although I love Adorno and Benjamin and feel they inform my entire project, I didn’t want to write an essay that claimed Albers was “serious� because they—famous, respected male theorists—shared some of her ideas. I think Albers’s thinking intersects with Adorno, Benjamin, Freud, Marx, and others, and she also shares their conflicted relationships with their own Jewishness. But I don’t know how useful it would be to just compare her with them. Has anyone else dealt with this? Do you have any thoughts on this issue?

Another question is about using “I.� Maddy and I corresponded a bit on this, I’m pasting our email exchange below. Basically I see that removing “I� does lend authority to writing, but at the same time I also like hearing the author’s personal voice. Because my project is very personal, taking out “I� gives it a sense of distance which feels sort of weird to me (as if I’m writing about myself in the 3rd person). I’d like to find a balance between authority and the personal, which I think may mean taking out some “I� statements but not all of them. I’d be interested to hear what others think about this. It seems relevant to teaching as well (I always have students who are reluctant to use “I� and sometimes others who seem to overuse it).

from Becky to Maddy:
one question, about the use of 'i' in academic writing . . . i just read something recently recommending that grad students not use 'i' in describing their projects, because writing sounds more authoritative without it. i was curious if that was why you prefered eliminating the 'i,' or if there was another reason. i think i agree (my writing certainly sounds much better with your edits), although i go back and forth on the issue. sometimes i like to hear the author's voice more directly. i'd love to hear your thoughts, when you have a chance . . .

from Maddy to Becky:

Anyway, to answer your question (if it's still applicable), yes, the reason that I would discourage the "I" in academic writing has to do with making it sound stronger. In general, sentences that begin with or contain "I feel" or "I present" tend to, I think, make the argument sound inconclusive when, in fact, having done the analytical work, you should feel completely confident in your findings. I hate to quote Tim, but he's always talking about not leading with your chin, and I find that I agree. He'd also said something in reference to my abstract about how to establish your findings than to present them as queries-- that is, instead of saying something like "an analysis of xya examines the implications for abc" one should actually go ahead and present what the findings are. I'm still trying to figure out how to do that one.

That said, I do agree that the author's voice is an important aspect of the dissertation. Do you think that "I" statements are really an effective way of establishing that voice? It seems to me that really, the way that you read a text, and then read it inter-textually, could reveal that individuality.

Circulating Selves: Identity, Autobiography, and Popular Reading in the Early Twentieth Century
This dissertation examines a wide range of autobiographical texts from early twentieth-century America to consider the ways in which autobiographical writing—intimately tied to socially-defined concepts of personhood such as race, ethnicity, and class—impacted a burgeoning middle-class readership in a period when ideas about identity were in great flux. Popular writers who narrated their lives from cultural locations outside of their middle-class readership faced a unique set of circumstances linked to changing concepts of cultural difference and developments in the technology of mass culture; their narrated lives resonated with readers in new ways that had significant implications for how those readers conceived of themselves in relation to others. Furthermore, this history of autobiography illuminates the unrecognized significance of the autobiographical in contemporary debates surrounding multiculturalism and literary studies. This study thus contributes to ongoing conversations that have attempted to enlarge our understanding of the full range of literary production and consumption of the modernist era through an examination of popular or “middlebrow� texts, while also drawing new connections between the history of publication and contemporary literary pedagogy.
The subfield of autobiography studies has exploded in recent decades. However, it has been saturated by a methodological focus on narrative analysis—that is, an examination of the structure and interaction of various elements within a narrative work as a means to consider how a person or life is textually constructed through autobiography. My project draws on theoretical developments linking autobiography to psychic subjectivity and political citizenship, but it goes further to broaden the study of autobiography from an exclusive focus on primary texts to include the material history surrounding those texts (publication history, author interviews, reviews, correspondence, etc.), thereby situating authors and works in the context of their contemporary readerships. This historical context is particularly significant because it allows for a consideration of how the function of genre, as an unstable system of classification, changes over time and across different cultural milieus: I ask, how has autobiography, as produced and circulated through a wide range of cultural mediums, facilitated the production of the middle-class citizen-subject at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? By bringing into conversation autobiography theory and a historical analysis of popular writing, I highlight the often-ignored significance of authorship as a public role embedded in institutions and reading as a social practice linked to the circulation and reception of texts; thus, this study also contributes to the emerging field of the history of the book.
Chapters one, two, and three examine autobiographical texts as they appeared in a wide range of venues in the early twentieth century. Chapter one focuses on autobiographical sketches and serialized autobiographies from mass magazines such as Munsey’s, The Independent, and Harper’s Monthly, which engaged (and in fact, helped shape) readers from an emerging middle class who were attempting to fix their bearings in the fluid social space of the fin de siécle. I argue that the ideological work performed by the magazines’ frequent inclusion of memoirs, reminiscences—not only by well-known politicians or literary figures, but also by immigrants, workers, and others whose lives were foreign to the magazines’ middle-class readership—informed and was informed by larger concepts of citizenship, selfhood, and an emerging ideology of consumerism. Chapter two examines popular novels that simultaneously destabilized conceptions of both genre and identity through variations of what I call “autobiographical passing�—the use of the generic conventions of traditional autobiography to explore newly malleable concepts of identity. I examine the reception and circulation of work by writers like Samuel Ornitz, James Weldon Johnson, and Edith Eaton, whose mock autobiographies reveal and challenge expectations for how both genre and identity function. Chapter three examines texts published for audiences more specialized than that of mass magazines and popular books. Autobiographical narratives were often collected and circulated by unions, ethnic newspapers, and other organizations operating outside of mainstream publishing apparatus. These texts provide an interesting counterpoint to those published for mass consumption, and the narrative comparisons they invite illuminate the imbrication of autobiographical practices and questions of audience and circulation.
Having examined a range of autobiographical texts and their circulation in the early twentieth century, chapter four links these findings to the contemporary debates surrounding multiculturalism and literary pedagogy. If, as many argue, over the course of the twentieth century the University came to claim the cultural authority that once belonged to publishers and literary critics, then we might see the contemporary literature classroom and its curriculum as a locus for the creation of middle-class reading practices. In that sense, literary education plays a primary role in setting up expectations of how texts should function within a social field. I argue that in the age of multiculturalism, the autobiographical has taken on a significance both more central and more unrecognized than ever before, as authors increasingly (and problematically) come to stand in as representatives of marginalized social groups.

I think your chapter is amazing! Its ideas and connections are so well thought out, complex, and clearly expressed. I enjoyed reading it. You're helping me think through some ideas in my own work-- not only because the Gothic and ghosts make appearances in your chapter, but also because, in it, you touch on some issues I'm considering in relation to Proto-filmic Poe and Jewish emigres' 1930s film adaptations of Poe's stories. Thank you for your insights.

I think the turn to Niedecker's poem works well to conclude the chapter. What's missing for me in the final paragraph is a fuller comparison of N's and Albers' ways of, and reasons for, "lament[ing] 'today's' lack of useful objects," that links all of the issues that the chapter has so brilliantly pieced together. I also suggest adding transitions between sections in the body of the chapter to make the development of your argument on Albers' theory of modernism more explicit. Finally, I think beefing up support for your claim that Albers "was not entirely alone" in her perspective on "the connection between art and life, as well as labor, craft, and politics" would serve the chapter well. In addition to Adorno, Benjamin comes to my mind as a theorist to compare to Albers. In particular, B's expressed purpose of writing theses on art to contribute to the worker's struggle, and his argument that mass production can be used toward revolutionary ends, in the "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility," and his ideas on having instantaneous flashes of insight (spontaneity?) while reading, and on comparing 'moderns' to "the ancients," in "The Doctrine of the Similar," seem to resonate with your claims about Albers' theory, not to mention that Benjamin is another German-Jewish exile. (Though perhaps simply because these essays are on my mind!)

Some questions on Albers' theory that occurred to me while reading your chapter and that perhaps would help you address the above:

1. Is the artist's struggle with material a kind of "negative objectification" in that, rather than do violence to the object, the artist gives (or takes?) voice/expression to (from?) the object? Perhaps say more about how Albers redefines objectification, as well as subjectification.

2. Do the terms unconscious, thought, subjectivity, subjectiveness, and individuality mean the same thing? Can you clarify how Albers redefines "thought," and why, if she's bringing the body and work into her idea of thought, does she see "convulsion" as anti-thought? Is Albers' theory anti-Freudian? (I think Benjamin has been interpreted as challenging Freudian theory.) Does Albers differ from Adorno in her refutation of a Freudian psychoanalytic paradigm? Does this relate to Albers "advocat[ing] working *with* mass production" (which, needless to say, Adorno found problematic, particularly in Benjamin's writing)? Is her comparison of the human and non-human (particularly, the machine) anti-Freudian?

3. What is the relationship between marginalization, minorities, minor art, the past, the folk, the feminine, and the response to WWI (as manifestation of the wrongs of and possible end to Western civilization)? Is Albers' theory primitivist because, in an effort to change the 'today' of the West, she equates the present of other cultures with the past (of the West), and argues the West must revive Others' pasts to create a future for the West? When Albers refers to "our way of doing things," does she collapse "Modernist" and "Western"? Is her theory implicated in a kind of cultural amnesia toward the pre-Enlightenment West?

4. Is Albers' theory anti-primitivist because she redefines assimilation?

5. On Naming: is Albers' stance toward anonymity more "conflicted" or "dialectical"? Can you say more about how advocating anonymity helps to revive the past and/or give voice to Others (in comparing Albers' theory to Niedecker's poem)?

6. Why is Albers' theory seen as conservative, exactly? Because she is against experimental art? Are conservativeness and conservationism the same?

That's all I have, for now. I hope these thoughts/questions are helpful. Feel free to email me or post any comments/questions on them. I'm sorry I didn't include page numbers in citing parts of your chapter, above. I printed out a copy with smaller font, less pages. But, if you can't tell what parts of your chapter I'm referring to in questions above, I'm happy to point to them.

Again, thank you for sharing your chapter, and well done!

Yours,
Lauren

Also, this discussion of the word and idea of speculation really interests me. Esp. in terms of seeing sort of forking into the two paths of knowing and guessing, and the increasing collusion of specualtion with capital. As it becomes less empirical and more, what, contemplative, imaginative, uncertain? speculation seems to be about seeing in MINDspace, VIRTUAL space, which is something I'm currently thinking about in terms of the development of psychoanalysis etc. But still about seeing, just seeing the future - like prognostication (which has your 'gnostic' in it Lauren) or clairvoyance, which, pardon my French, seems to indicate 'clear seeing' or something like it. (And why does any sensate connection to the future have to be visual? It's the hegemony of the visual for sure ... though Proust could smell his way back). Also this connection with capitalist "VENTURES," I think both 'speculation' and certainly 'prospecting' are Gold Rush terms ... land where your hoping something is in it. And I'm still thinking of SURVEYING and cartography, owning land with your imperial eyes, etc.

Sorry to have been so delinquent with the blog