More on the "Ridiculously Long" Dissertation

Note: read the previous post first :-)

Yes, Tracy, it is a ridiculously long dissertation, even for my discipline (which at this point I'm still a bit fuzzy about in the blog, let's say all you need is to add a word that begins with "c" to the area I in the "about me" part).

It's like two or three dissertations rolled into one, really. After the theory and methodology part, I review all of Brazilian lit. in order to try and determine the proportion of m#en to wom3n writers (a project that involved typing up 14K author names and many more publication dates). Then I do a review of lit. showing how my own research draws on what has been done before in this area and present the results of my survey. This is the "macro" part. The second, "micro" part is an analysis of seven books by three wom3n authors.

Complementing the stats I presented yesterday:

- The length of the dissertation without the appendices and bibliography is "only" 399 pages. A lot of those pages are taken up by the tables and charts, obviously -- something totally and absolutely unusual in dissertation about lit3rature.

I want to blog about that some other time. How about a month ago I finally found out someone who does something similar (using data, graphs, charts) and now I don't feel so lost anymore. In the past two years I presented my research at various major conferences, as you know, and all I got were blank stares. That's one of the reasons why I think I have no chance whatsoever of getting a tenure track job. My research is just TOO ORIGINAL, perhaps even risqué in that sense. Not fashionable at all.

Moreover, I DO NOT depart from any theory or political positioning as is standard, but I look into real data, concrete evidence which sometimes contradicts theoretical positions. Even worse, huh?

Well, now I have to go teach a piano class and tomorrow we'll have guests here, so we're very busy.

There are TONS of things I want to blog about however, so I hope to be back with much more soon.