Research Consultation: Colby

Colby, Fall 2013

We began with the following questions/concerns:

  • Source management
  • Zotero
  • Time management

Source Management: When working with general sources, or sources written for a nonspecialist audience, use the index and the bibliographies rather than reading straight through. Taking the time to sort through what sources will be useful is not wasted time; it will allow you to direct your search more quickly. Helps distill the research question. In this case, we have a creative project and a critical project, and both are going to have to be built and grown at the same time. And if one part of the project isn’t flowing, you should work on the other part of the project–make time for the treatment as well as the critical introduction. But do a little bit daily–this will help manage the anxiety and make deadlines more realistic.

Colby’s DFW primary sources need a boost from secondary, lit-crit sources. Academic database searching is the way to go for this–on topics re: self-consciousness and autobiography in Infinite Jest. This is her next move!

Colby’s also going to keep an online whiteboard/general inspiration board online at Mural.ly. This will be an evolving, multi-dimensional space; the key is to always incorporate new material in relationship to old.

Zotero: We downloaded the standalone Zotero app for use on Colby’s Macbook, and discussed the benefits of the app versus the browser extension. We covered how you can use Zotero to take notes, how you can edit citations, Zotero for PDF management, and how to use it with Word when you are integrating your source material into your draft. Lindsey recommended making several Zotero folders (and/or tags) for sources: Sources I Have Read, Sources I Have Found, Sources I Have Yet To Find. She also recommended using Zotero’s “Notes” and “tags” functions for note-taking and file sorting.

Time Management: We talked about using Google Calendar for deadline management, and set suggested appointment dates in November in order to boost productivity. We also discussed the “pomodoro” technique (25 minutes of work followed by a 5 minute break), for which Lindsey recommends something like focus booster, and free apps like SelfControl, which shut off the more tempting parts of the Internet while you are working

Tablet Apps: 

  • Genius Scan is essential! Turns any iPhone or iPad into a scanner. Use this when working with books, especially in the library
  • Get a document reader that can annotate: GoodReader is a good one, Lindsey also uses iAnnotate PDF (which, despite the name, does more than PDFs)
  • Dropbox and Google Drive both have apps; be sure you are backing up your documents in the cloud
  • BEST APP EVER: Unstuck. Helps you when you are stuck! Seriously! It really works!
  • Simple Pomodoro Timer for time management/pomodoro technique
  • For getting ideas down: Lindsey likes OmmWriter (sweet interface; plug headphones in for calming music within the app) and Dragon Dictation (free! Talk to someone other than Siri!). If you are thinking visually she also recommends Paper, which is a sketchbook app.

Research Consultation: Laura

Fall 2013, Laura

We had 2 primary goals for this session:

  1. project management options
  2. Zotero mini-workshop

Project Management: Lindsey started with Lifehacker’s list of 5 top project management tools. We then talked about Google Calendar as a means of projecting out long-term deadlines. This, in combination with Laura’s current to-do list practices, seems to make the most sense at this point.

Zotero: We downloaded the standalone Zotero app for use on Laura’s Macbook, and discussed the benefits of the app versus the browser extension. We covered how you can use Zotero to take notes, how you can edit citations, Zotero for PDF management, and how to use it with Word when you are integrating your source material into your draft. Lindsey recommended making several Zotero folders (and/or tags) for sources: Sources I Have Read, Sources I Have Found, Sources I Have Yet To Find. She also recommended using Zotero’s “Notes” and “tags” functions for note-taking and file sorting.

Productivity Applications: We discussed the “pomodoro” technique (25 minutes of work followed by a 5 minute break), for which Lindsey recommends something like focus booster, and free apps like SelfControl, which shut off the more tempting parts of the Internet while you are working. We also talked about a goal of doing a little bit of work daily.

10/8: What I Did This Week

Kerishma
  • Went rooting for some titles on the theory of fantasy and fantasy literature in general in the Hunter stacks. Found some titles that could prove to be useful, and am excited to go through them!
    Photo0113
  • Reached out again to Professor Dow Robbins about being my advisor.
  • Meditated on my intended audience. While I can expect a good amount of people to be familiar in some way with the modern popular works of fantasy (Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, HBO’s Game of Thrones, etc), I obviously can’t expect them to be familiar with the history of the genre. I’d like to make my thesis as accessible to as many people as possible, so one of my projects is to try not to get lost in the more esoteric aspects of my topic. My big concern is being able to accurately explain the complexities of the storylines and characters without getting lost or leaving anything important out.

ETA: The printer at MHC wasn’t working, so here’s the “crisp paragraph” that was due today!

For my thesis, I would like to investigate the depictions of women and power in the Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R. R. Martin. I will first present a brief history and survey of the fantasy genre, as well as a selection of notable female characters and character tropes in the genre. I will then place the Ice and Fire novels within this context, (hopefully) demonstrating why Martin’s women and works are so important and progressive within the fantasy tradition. I will follow the character arcs of several female characters rather than on all of them, as there are too many to count. I will also touch upon the HBO adaptation of the novels, Game of Thrones,  and examine its own representations of gender and power. I will need to examine film theory and the process of adaptation for this component of my paper.

I am still working on the “so what?” of my paper – Martin has powerful and diverse women in his universe–so what? I’m thinking about delving into one of the functions of fantasy as a critique of the real world, and connecting the diversity of Martin’s women to the importance of women and power in the real world.

Some titles I am perusing at the moment mostly deal with the theory, function, and history of the fantasy genre:

  • The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature by Brian Attebery
  • Merlin’s Daughters by Charlotte Spivack
  • Bridges to Fantasy by Eric S. Rabkin
  • Other Worlds” The Fantasy Genre by John Timmerman

What I Did This Week (10/8)

Laura
  • tried to find an adviser in the film department
  • inspired by Lindsey’s research workshop to use Tumblr (found behind the scenes and promotional images, reviews, an infographic by The Guardian featuring stats about Hitchcock’s most popular works, real-time posts by Hitchcock fans in honor of Hitchcocktober, etc.)
  • setting up meeting with Joe McElhaney (Hunter’s Hitchcock expert) to run my ideas by him
  • narrowing down primary sources (novels and films)
  • met with Isabel Pindeo; helped me weed out irrelevant sources that were only confusing me and pulling my thesis in different directions
  • started using Zotero to keep my bibliography under control

Resources for Science Fiction Research

Fall 2013, Kerishma

1:1 Research Meetings and Group Work Sessions

Fall 2013

As we head into October I want to encourage everyone not only to mail me to set up a research strategy meeting, but to also consider me a resource to help plan and run group work sessions, be they at Macaulay, at the Hunter Library, or elsewhere. If you want someone around to work alongside, please e-mail me.

For your research meeting, it will help if you’ve already done some exploration. Use the material from today’s session on online research, continue with your library research, and come to me with your questions and frustrations after you’ve begun to get into your source material.

frustrated writer

There are some additional topics I can tackle with you one on one, which we did not talk about today in any depth. If you’re interested in discussing any of these things, let me know before we meet!

  • Mac, tablet and smartphone applications related to research, productivity, and time management
  • Professional (or amateur!) organizations devoted to your subfield (such as science fiction & fantasy, or gothic literature, or even specific authors)–finding and using their web sites, conference proceedings, and other material
  • Schools and structures of literary criticism–determining what might most apply to your project, and bringing in resources to help sort out any jargon that is coming up in the sources you find
  • Integrating both qualitative (images, audio, video) and quantitative (stats! numbers!) data into your research (or even just thinking about whether or not that has a role in your project at this point)
  • Archival materials–talking further about what’s in the archives and how to get at it

Please set up a meeting with me on or before October 15th–that gives you some time to get into your sources and come up with questions I can help with, but it also gives you time to apply what we talk about in our chat. I’m at Macaulay on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons generally, but I can try to come in on another day if absolutely necessary.

After each meeting, I’ll send a record of what we discussed to both you and Prof. Isenberg.

Good luck, everyone!

–Lindsey