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October 17, 2006
bewilderment
So…here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. The 1970s. Scandals. American identity. Confusion. Bicentennial. Public history. Social history. A new emphasis on individualism and personal history (the "me" generation). The idealization of the past. The idealization of the south and rural life. A return to tonality. And how these all come together in the form of two pieces written during the early 1970s that use shape-note hymns.
I just can’t figure out how to pull it all together into a coherent chapter.
I feel like I'm fumbling through different kinds of history and historical writing, wishing I had a better grasp on methods of historiography.
dissertation | By Tim and Jo | 7:15 PM
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Comments
Awww. Don't worry too much about historiography.
Some of the best advice I've received was to just right the story. Figure out whose story you're telling (like the shape note piece or the Order of the Golden Fleece or something like that) and just tell it. That'll give you a good first draft. Then go back and figure how to nuance the perspectives/hone the thesis. Whatevah.
Posted by: Jeannette at October 18, 2006 7:30 PM
Thanks, Jnet! I followed your advice about starting with the piece, wrote out a timeline of the musical "events" in one of the pieces (following your frequent example), and broke free of the awful block that's been bugging me the past few weeks.
I then wrote almost four pages today, pretty rough in spots, but overall, pretty solid.
Woohoo!
Posted by: Jo at October 20, 2006 4:23 PM