Chapter Two Was Born

Finally was able to sleep around 530 this mornin, but unfortunately much of the day I was tired and sick--went to teach my class feeling like I might fall out at any moment. As a result, I didn't stay on campus to research Eva Clayton more so I'll have to do that tomorrow. But the day wasn't completely unproductive--today chapter two of my dissertation was born. Chapter two (proposes to) looks at the overall rhetorical history of African-American women in politics. Very little work has been done that traces African-American women's political activity from slavery to the present--the work that I know in this area is from a political scientist's perspective. I'm interested in the rhetorical arguments that compelled/explained/accompanied this activity. So I wrote two pages on trends and transformations in the rhetorical arguments of African-American women in politics. It was an unexpected moment--the idea of how I might want to start chapter two came to me in the car on my way home from class. So I am very proud of myself for 1) not forgetting and 2) forcing myself to sit down and write it out and spend some time thinking about the possible organization from the chapter. I'll know after the proposal meeting how much more I need to work with it to create Chapter one and will be able to run right into writing Chapter two. Likely, I'll be working on both at the same time. I am not extremely linear when I write--right now my dissertation is not organized concretely--the chapters have been numbered according to which topics I want to write on first (determined by my previous knowledge and/or need to go to certain archives at times that don't conflict with my conference schedule). So for now I feel like I've bitten off a chunk I can handle--chapters one and two will be my focus between now and the end of July....