Methodology
I met with my beloved advisor, NSR, on Thursday 4/4 to talk about the "draft" of my thesis I'd completed (i.e., posts 1-16) and "whether I was Roquentin or Revel," meaning whether or not I would do edits, and, if so, how. Editing is typically the next step in the thesis process, however, because of the form I chose and because I don't want to sacrifice my attempt at authenticity, it was not immediately obvious how I could move forward. We discussed using some kind of hypertext so that I could make revisions, but keep the original text largely as-is.
This whole project has been a foray into the unknown for me in terms of technology and social media, and my experience in this matter has been no different. I got a few suggestions on how to actually use hypertext from a fellow Comparative Literature (and Physics) major who graduated last year, and from there I've had a lot of fun contributing to the entropy of the internet.
After some largely unfruitful work with ThinkLink (which did, however, allow me to post my bibliography as an icon in the blog's banner image), I eventually settled on creating a website to which I would link my comments, like an endnotes section, just on a different webpage instead of a different physical one. I also have been able to sneak a few non-edit-related links in, so I hope you've enjoyed coming across those, if you've visited my first posts recently.
This is all still a work in progress, so I expect something in this methodology will change before all is said and done, but for now, it seems like I've established a pattern that will support the editing requirements of my blog relatively well. I do say only "relatively" well, because I can't make myself track the changes I've made to correct typos and other silly errors that NSR caught which had originally escaped me. (I don't know if is more-so for reasons of simplicity or vanity, but I'm not keen to figure it out.) The other problem is that I'm rewriting a few sections, but they are obviously written from a different vantage point, coming from the "end" of the drafting process rather than in the beginning or even the pre-drafting stage, so I'm not sure if I ought to take on the persona of Emily-writing-March-10 or if I ought to write from the present. I'm leaning toward the former, though I have my methodological concerns about that. It seems to be the logical way to edit, though - otherwise, I'd end up with an obviously different project each time I went through to do corrections (not even content-related edits), which, though not unimaginable for me, is unacceptable given the graduation-imposed timeline.
I originally wanted to include text in the original posts that would appear as a reader hovered over a part of the text with their cursor, that way I could reduce the distance between the original material and the changes I was making in the "second draft," but I can't figure out how to do that. However, it's recently occurred to me that this hypertext form fits the content of the project much better than a linear one would, since its scattered pieces reflect the dissemination of meaning with which these texts variously struggle.
KJ Study Room, Hamilton College, NY - 14 April 2013.
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