On To The Dissertation

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Update:

I finished my MA this semester. That effort consisted of revising three papers I had worked on over the past three years. I actually ended up revising two and creating one from scratch, which I also gave as a lecture. The main idea I examined in all three papers had to do with the performance of civil disobedience, but the sites of my inquiries were diverse. In one paper, I examined a protest, known now as Peterloo, that occurred in Manchester, England, in 1819. In another, I looked at the electronic civil disobedience of Ricardo Dominguez. Dominguez is a fascinating person who has worked with the Chiapas rebel army in Southern Mexico and various other groups around the world to fight against governmental oppression. He engages with governments in virtual space, i.e. on the Internet. The third paper looked closely at Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, where I saw a creative deployment of what Guy Debord and the Situationist International called détournement. In all three papers, the theoretical underpinnings run through ideas of Adorno, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. I intend to continue my use of their thinking as I begin work on my dissertation, which looks at eighteenth-century Venetian performance and Baroque Visualism. Hence the map above. Joanne and I are off to Europe for two months where we will research our respective projects. I'll do my very best to keep this blog updated with images and news from our trip.

If anyone would like to read my papers or talk about any of my paper topics, I'd be happy to do so. Email me or post a comment to this blog and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.