Well, while I now know far more about Middle-earth than is probably healthy (although, not going to lie, Stephen Colbert probably still knows more), I can say that this summer has been productive. I’ve read countless scholarly books and articles, written a heck ton of (hopefully useful) notes, and highlighted the bejeezus out of my…
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The post Final Update: Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost (I Hope) appeared first on W&M Honors Fellows.

Many people know of the story of Frodo, a humble hobbit who embarks on a quest, along with a fellowship of representatives of various peoples, to destroy a powerful and dangerous magic ring. Fewer people might be familiar with American Gods, in which Shadow, an ex-convict whose wife dies on the day of his release…
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The post Fantasy and Nationalism: Initial Thoughts and Future Plans appeared first on W&M Honors Fellows.

In a letter to a publisher in 1956, J.J.R. Tolkien claims that in writing The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion he hoped to create a national mythology for England, rooted in Anglo-Saxon and Norse lore. Even though later in the very same letter Tolkien acknowledges this urge as “absurd,” the sentiment remains important to interpreting his fantasy. While mythopoeia—myth creation—is…
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The post Myth of a Nation: Fantasy and Nationalism appeared first on W&M Honors Fellows.

In a letter to a publisher in 1956, J.J.R. Tolkien claims that in writing The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion he hoped to create a national mythology for England, rooted in Anglo-Saxon and Norse lore. Even though later in the very same letter the creator of Middle-Earth acknowledges this urge as “absurd,” the sentiment remains […]

The post Abstract: National Myth in Fantasy Literature appeared first on Upperclass Monroe Scholars Summer Research Projects.

I came to a realization this week, or rather, I came to an analogy.  My thesis is like a suitcase.  An overstuffed suitcase.  In fact, I think there’s even a kitchen sink stuffed into this suitcase, so overstuffed is it.  I’ve been writing my second chapter, in which I examine the development of Quebec national […]

The post Suitcase and etiquette appeared first on N2O.

Chapter Four came back surprisingly quickly, since it sucked… Well, to be fair, the prose itself wasn’t all that bad, but it needs a good sit-down and comb-through before it’ll be up to snuff. The comments I got back on the first three pages of it (all my advisor would read, at first) smarted. I […]

The post Hidden meanings appeared first on N2O.

So, I made a decent amount of progress on last week’s goals even though I can’t cross them out as completed.  First, I discovered that I could draw out a lot of interview data from handwritten notes, isolating less than four hours of recordings to listen to rather than eight.  There’s a long car ride […]

So after my interviews and literature review, I was under the distinct impression that ethnicity did not play a major role in voting patterns, especially in the case of Haitians.  There was a lot of backlash from the community when Jacques Parizeau, then leader of Quebec and  the Parti Québécois, stated infamously that it was […]

Last time I met with my advisor I got assigned the revision of my thesis, as in the revision of the major claim to be supported in the up-to-100-pages of the eventual paper thesis. For this I had to read two articles. The first, the Rouse article, takes my topic from a comparative […]

I realized today in the middle of doing some other class’s reading that it would be really easy to argue that Haitian Montrealers/Haitians in Montreal/haïtiano-québécois have a distinct nationalism that has developed out of their experiences as Haitians and as Montrealers without leaning one way or the other. Admittedly, I need a better, deeper […]