...I didn't like.
Writing the job talk (and then basically doing it over again last weekend in time for Monday morning's talk) has really broadened my outlook on the dissertation beyond the itty-bitty text fragments I've been working with.
Today I've been reading and organizing all the files into a structure that I hope will be more conducive to moving forward. Something that people don't really discuss very often is that managing all the information - stray thoughts, quotes, readings, data, etc. - for a dissertation really needs more of a system than the ol' wetware filing cabinet. The latter works ok for term papers, when you spend a couple weeks working intensively on a project and can keep all the details in mind. So it's fine for the sprint, but not really possible for the marathon.
I think my diss would be well-served by pulling back to some bigger questions, and then diving back into the details and making sure they support the larger point of view. I am going to work for the next week on the tourism piece - on data, theoretical approaches, etc - that will be a major component of my final lit review. I am going to begin with an outline of some questions and topics that need to be covered, and then I am going to use my work to fill in the blanks.
I try, at the first of every month, to assess my progress and my congruence with the management strategies I laid out for myself in late August.
I've gotten far away from my proposed schedule and to-do list, but let's just say that this is the monthly check-in for December 1 instead of November 1, and try to get this wagon back on track.
1. Join a writing group. The group that was trying to form never did, and I'm going to drop this goal because I was really in it for the collegiality, not for the writing help. However, this goal relates in an a tangential way to:
2. reconfigure the home office. I did that early in September, and it's much more comfortable. The problem is that working from home makes me isolated from my peers (as if dissertation writing wasn't isolating enough). Since I am still in residence, it makes sense to try somehow to take advantage of that - and I think that will be by building some campus time into the schedule every week. Now that my infrastructure engineering "project" is over, that will be easier. We have also slipped into a department-bashing mode that's counterproductive, and we spend inordinate amounts of time cooking and eating and doing errands, which I would also like to streamline somehow.
What I've been working on this weekend is re-organizing all my dissertation files on the computer. That sounds like work avoidance, but for me it's actually a way of taking stock. As I see the end in sight, and start to think about future projects, it's also helpful to recategorize some fringe information for future research use.
3. The weekly to-do list got shelved when it was depressing to look at how far behind I was. But I won't get anywhere without some internal interim deadlines, so I somehow have to come to terms with this.
4, 5, and 6. Write 90 minutes every morning, then take a break for some household chores, then do reading and translation in the afternoons and evenings. I have never really gotten into this, and I think part of the problem is that I am not "ready" to write, in the sense that just diving into it is not the most efficient use of my time. I have tried to start small with the smallest factual unit and build upward, but having no sense of the overall final structure or thesis makes this very difficult. I accept that there will be false starts, but my approach is starting to feel just too "out there."
7. I have been very disciplined at compartmentalizing my teaching time. I have NOT been successful doing the same for Internet and email.
8. I have tried to ride the bike on nice days, and to build some walking time in here and there.
9. For Polish, I have a new language partner. It's working well, but I need to build in some study time every day, rather than frantically before our meeting, to review and learn.
10. I'll check in again in early January.
I am off to the East Coast on Saturday morning (crack o' dawn) to interview at a prominent university. Part of the drill (in addition to rehearsing interview Q&A, and researching questions to ask the people I meet with) is presenting my current research.
I am going to talk about the tour aspect, so I have to contextualize that first within my dissertation but then within the larger picture of "why should someone care" and relatedly, "how does this research relate to what you can do for US?"
The audience is scholars, but outside my field, and I am shooting for about 40 minutes, thus leaving some time for questions. So questions of context and relevance are even more important than they would otherwise be. Plus I have to show that I'm both interesting and thorough as a lecturer.
On that demanding note, back to it.
LC categories:
Cities and towns - Soviet Union
Cities and towns - Europe, eastern
Books:
City and regional planning in Poland. Jack Fisher
cities without crisis. Davidow. MLAC
some other thing HT145.S58 B6x 1980.
And more:
Cities of the Soviet Union, the classic by Chauncey Harris
Urban inequalities under state socialism, Ivan Szelenyi.
Some hints about the evolution of communism in CEE are probably available in a slew of new books on the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, recently marking its 50th anniversary.
There's a photo-essay: Revolution in Hungary, by Erich Lessing. Thames and Hudson
There's a reconstruction of the actual events: Twelve Days, by Victor Sebestyen, Pantheon.
There's a policy book: Failed Illusions, Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt, by Charles Gati, Stanford UP.
And there's a memoir: Journey to a Revolution, a personal memoir and history of the H.R. of 1956, by Michael Korda, Harper Collins.
They were reviewed in an essay by Jacob Heilbrunn in the 10/29/06 NYT Book Review. I am probably most interested in the policy considerations, but what is most interesting at this precise moment is the extent to which Hungarians were invested in communism as an ideology. The sense I got in Poland, and also from a history of the immediate postwar period is that in Poland no one was a communist. At least ideologically. I also get the sense that Poland paints itself as "different" and perhaps these books will help me figure out how true that is.