Research proposals
Feb. 19th, 2013 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAttempting to write a research proposal. Have decided that, in the main, I couldn't care less about Artists and Writers Responding to World War I and have no desire to research a twenty page paper about that damn topic, unless of course I can focus all twenty pages on Stirling North's Rascal, which is about pet raccoons and pie eating contests and a glowingly nostalgic vision of life in 1918 Wisconsin rather than the war.
Alternatively, World War I in American girls' fiction, 1914-1925, but I'm pretty sure that everything that can be said about World War I's effects on women's rights and images of femininity has already been said. Everything has already been said about World War I in art and memory.
I'm not sure if it's a good idea to start my research proposal "I know we talked about doing this one topic, but I've decided I just can't do it and have decided to do this other thing related to American Identity. (That is the course title. The paper must be related to American Identity.) This other thing that I need to come up with before Thursday, because that's when my research proposal is due."
ETA: I knew I shouldn't have posted this, because I would finish the damn proposal and then I would feel silly about screeching all over LJ about my stupid crisis. It is a stupid proposal, Basically it's nine hundred words of "Really the bits I like best are the flag paintings and Rascal and that series about the Red Cross Girls dashing about Europe during WWI, and isn't it weird how American WWI stuff is so much more abstract than British?"
Seriously. A Farewell to Arms is basically a romance with a retreat tossed in. Also, how do we square the widespread pacifism - pro-war pacifism ("This is a good war because it will end wars, because war is bad!") - with all the stuff people have been writing about warmongering American masculinity in the early twentieth century?
Alternatively, World War I in American girls' fiction, 1914-1925, but I'm pretty sure that everything that can be said about World War I's effects on women's rights and images of femininity has already been said. Everything has already been said about World War I in art and memory.
I'm not sure if it's a good idea to start my research proposal "I know we talked about doing this one topic, but I've decided I just can't do it and have decided to do this other thing related to American Identity. (That is the course title. The paper must be related to American Identity.) This other thing that I need to come up with before Thursday, because that's when my research proposal is due."
ETA: I knew I shouldn't have posted this, because I would finish the damn proposal and then I would feel silly about screeching all over LJ about my stupid crisis. It is a stupid proposal, Basically it's nine hundred words of "Really the bits I like best are the flag paintings and Rascal and that series about the Red Cross Girls dashing about Europe during WWI, and isn't it weird how American WWI stuff is so much more abstract than British?"
Seriously. A Farewell to Arms is basically a romance with a retreat tossed in. Also, how do we square the widespread pacifism - pro-war pacifism ("This is a good war because it will end wars, because war is bad!") - with all the stuff people have been writing about warmongering American masculinity in the early twentieth century?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-02-19 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-19 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-19 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-19 05:55 pm (UTC)