spilled ink

I'd like to introduce you all to the newest addition to our household...



...the stack of books (as of February 7; it's now past my waist and also has a smaller sibling).

Valya asked me to explain orals a week or so ago, and I've been meaning to do it for a while. Tonight my patience for reading is gone (though the book I just finished was quite good), but it's not time for sleep yet.

Orals, or comps, are one of the last hurdles to jump through before you can start your own research in most humanities grad programs. For us, they're ideally done in your 3rd year, or early 4th year, and precede your dissertation prospectus (which I'll hopefully do in late March). The exam itself is two hours, with 4 professors firing questions at you about the 4 fields you have chosen to read in. The point, depending on who you ask:

- prepare yourself to teach the literature in your given field(s)
- familiarize yourself with the background material you'll need to write your thesis
- situate yourself intellectually and methodologically in your field(s)


In my track, you can construct your own fields (whereas Americanists have to do 3 set fields for colonial, 19th c., and 20th c., and then create 1), and you do so by talking with potential professors and figuring out what fits into your project and interests. And what you need to know to talk with people professionally and not sound stupid (key, no?). You then talk with professors about doing a field with them (you also ask other folks who is nice and who is wicked, and decide accordingly, if you have options). At this point, you either look at other people's past lists, get guidelines/names/titles from your professors, or start scouring library catalogs and review articles.

I kinda did all three, back in September/October. You then build a list of 40-60 books, usually with subdivisions. You negotiate, you offer to take books off, you consent to putting books on, you leave thinking ohshithowiamigoingtoreadallofthisandteachandwork...and then you start reading. Making the lists is pretty stressful, and you're still in negotiations in the final weeks before the exam (because you remove books that you don't think are essential, maybe a prof chops a few off in a bout of generosity, etc).

My fields are:

Germany, 1870-1945
Public Health since 1850 (focus on tropical medicine and infectious disease)
East and Central Africa, roughly since 1850
Colonialism: theory and practice.

These are pretty specific, but the point is hit as many of the general works in the canon and some of the stuff that is directly relevant to your own research; it's not meant to be the bibliography of your thesis, but maybe the folks you would want to name-check to demonstrate that you have not just read the newspaper, or comic books. Not that there's anything wrong with that. My dissertation topic will have to do with scientific research conducted in German East Africa, colonial transitions, fieldwork/lab work, and it all fits.

Ideally, you read fields with professors who you've taken classes with, and who are amenable to putting books on your list that you've read in a class. The alternative is just sort of mean-spirited, really, all new books. My lists have settled in at between 40-45 books a piece (not counting review articles I'll find to help make sense of it in the final stretch).

Ye olde stack of books is maybe 75% of what I've actually read so far, because I've returned some books, the others are on my shelves, and so on and so forth. For a while, I returned the books I didn't like, almost immediately, and then I thought about how satisfying a gargantuan stack of books would be. My sister suggested that I calculate the books relative to the distance the moon, or something similar, but I just can't do the math right now.

But the whole point? Orals are, in some way, a hazing ritual, or a rite of passage. The exam forces you to engage with the major voices and opinions in your field, and to catch some of the random stuff as well. You're meant to decide where you fall, in the scheme of things, and what you will want to contribute. Also, to get your chronology straight enough that you don't confuse the undergrads you'll be lecturing. You also don't read the books, you "read" them - intro, conclusion, chapter intro's and maybe topic sentences or paragraphs. I get sucked in sometimes to a good section, and if the literature is totally new (like, say, Weimar Germany), I skim as little as I can. I'll go over all of the books I've already read, too. But the point is to read for argument, and to know how different arguments fit togther. And then not, like, sit there and lick your shoes or, I don't know, burp when they ask you a question. For the record, I have already planned to wear my shoes with the little dragonflies on them, which I am not tempted to lick and which make me feel smart and vaguely hip (thanks again, Lau).

So, it's a sort of collective immiseration, but also a point of collective encouragement. A bunch of my cohort are doing their exams in March/April, and everyone sends out announcements for celebratory happy hours, the post-orals party etc. Everyone understands when you beg off of meetings/parties/seminars/chatting, and gets it when you look harried & pale (as Kolz has told me I do, which I think calls for a post-orals trip to, I don't know, St. Croix? Freakin' Virgin Islands tourism bureau takes over the subway ads this time of year. It's just cruel.) Living in the library and reading while you do practically everything but shower is acceptable behavior. I personally read while I eat.

And oh, by the way -- my exam is on March 1, at 10 am. The date was set last week. I have to help run a big workshop on the 2nd, but damn, is that weekend going to be fun once it gets started. Fingers crossed that I make it there with a full head of hair and operational eyes. I am making progress, but there are many more check-marks to be made before I'm out of the woods.