Met with my supervisor today. She was happy with my reading list though she wants me to trim it (a few suggestions on what to trim, but pretty much up to me). Overall, I feel happy about the meeting - there have been a few times in the past when we met and I thought we were actually having two different conversations, but today, we were on the same page (mostly).
So, now I have several things to do:
- I have to go through the list of texts that I have and rearrange them under the new categories we discussed (this is where trimming should happen)
- Then I have to split those lists into primary and secondary novels
- Next I need to read them (okay, well, at least the ones I haven't yet read)
- After that, I need to find books on: contemporary British history/culture; criticism about representations of historical material in fiction; postmodernism; and postcolonialism *whew!*
- Then I have to give her another list.
That's all.
The other good news/bad news element (depending on whether I can pull it off) is that she is satisfied with my projected timetable for writing the exams, though I couldn't pin her down on a deadline date for submission of that second list in order to write the exam when I want to. Oh well, I suppose I can chalk it up as a successful meeting even if I didn't get that.
Oh, yeah, and she indicated I should audit a class that our new professor of Twentieth Century literature will teach when he arrives this fall. And that he will likely lead the dissertation committee. Those were two questions that I had about how his hire will impact my studies. His specialization in Irish lit, so we don't have much overlap, but his degree is officially listed as cultural studies, so he'll be a good resource for methodology more than primary textual analysis.
Perhaps I should celebrate...
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