The Short Version: I wrote two theses.
The Long Version: Since I have been delinquent in writing weekly posts for the last three weeks, I have decided to write a long post of my process.
PART I: ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
The last post I wrote was about a lull in the process of writing my ENVS thesis. I had about a week and a half of recuperation after I turned in my first full draft of my thesis, and before I hit the library to write the first full revision of my English thesis. This was more intense that I was expected, as I overhauled a large part of my argument. After I turned that it, I turned around to revise and finish my ENVS thesis. This turned out to be another large overhaul, especially of my theory section/top of the hourglass. Responding to feedback that my draft top-of-the-hourglass was a little fragmented, rather than a fluid argument, I really foregrounded the analysis of Le Guin and Latour that I wrote way back in September. This was a great decision, as it helped me frame my case study much more clearly. I was able to pull in and flesh out a lot more than I felt I was able to before much more efficiently.
Another major shift in my revision was to add another dimension to the tippy-top of the hourglass – an ongoing debate in the world regarding the value of the humanities, and as an extension, the value of the liberal arts. There were two different camps I discovered — those who believe that the humanities have instrumental value, such that English majors make better CEOs or doctors, or that musicians have better business skills, or that reading improves compassion. The other camp believes that learning and the humanities have inherent value, that the liberal arts are for people who love to learn, a passion we should foster in and of itself. I was struck my using environmental literature to enact change in an attempt to solve the environmental crisis, or to prepare people for earthquakes, or to raise money for victims of Tohoku. None of my major works seemed to be in this camp, but they all promised that literature would enact change on readers and writers. I don’t really take a stance on this debate, except to say that there may be a third space (such as a third space in between science and humanities where they may talk to each other without losing all meaning). This implicates questions such as: what can art and stories offer WHO in a world unsettled by change? what can AND SHOULD art and stories offer a world unsettled by change?
After the draft was finished, it was spring break!! After a few days in the sun, I prepared my honors thesis defense and successfully defended my thesis in front of my professors. It was a really interesting, nerve-wracking, and lovely experience. We could even see Mt Hood out of the window. There were a lot of big questions posed by my thesis, and we had a good time pondering them together. It was really interesting for me to see my two majors come together — both in the professors in the room and in the topics we were discussing. I’m so excited to go to grad school for environmental humanities in the fall! But moreover, I am so utterly grateful and thankful for the hard work from my professors – Liz, Jim, Kristin — not just this semester, but for every semester I’ve had the pleasure of enrolling in their classes. In the words of Kelsey Kahn, I am now an honors curmudgeon. I am very happy and excited to be awarded honors, and I am so thankful for all the help and encouragement along the way.
PART II: ENGLISH
I set an enormous goal for myself this year: to write two honors theses in both my majors. ENVS required an accelerated timeline, along with excellent work. By putting my head down, listening to feedback, and adhering strictly to the timeline, I was able to complete the paper, a paper I had full control over in terms of topic. For my English thesis, I had three options during registration a year ago, and I chose John Keats. Little did I know I would be spending a full year getting to know John Keats very very very well. The first semester was a rapid-fire initiation to everything Keats — letters, poems, mythology, context. He was a doctor. He was the least nature-focused of all the Romantics. He died when he was 25. After changing topics many times, I wrote most of my seminar paper in the last week of school, rethinking Keats over and over and over. I was nominated to pursue honors, and submitted an application. Though my main professor was abroad this semester in Dublin, I was selected to pursue honors by revising and strengthening the paper I wrote in the fall.
On Thursday after my ENVS thesis defense, I submitted a final and polished version of my paper to the English Department. It is really amazing that since my first semester of ENVS, I was pulling John Keats into my Environmental Studies scholarship. My Keats thesis, to an untrained eye, looks nothing like my ENVS thesis. There is very little discussion of nature in the paper (though I do have a paragraph on gardens, in which I cited Bate’s The Song the Earth also!). However, each go deep into literary theory, and I felt the gravitational pull of each project on the other. They each were in reader-response mode for a while, each in the ambiguous ‘power of art’ mode, each in a space where crisis and death were artistic motivators, each thinking about crossing of boundaries. This was the most interesting thing about writing two projects that were heavily influenced by the specific interests of my professors: the ways in which they overlapped on some theoretical plane that I never quite reached (which is probably a good thing).
There is, of course, much more to do. I have a lot of bookkeeping and cleaning to do, a lot of reading and catching up, a little bit of revising and polishing, a workout schedule to forge for myself, several presentations to execute, and a graduation ceremony to prepare for. I hope to make up for the deep dive into my projects that created a desert of DS posts by keeping updated with the many more turnarounds and changes to come. There is still a month of school, folks, and a lot to learn!