elanya

This morning I gave my Enlightenment lecture for the second time. I think it went even better this time around - Dr. Parkerson seemed to think so anyway, although he was pretty impressed last round as well. Then I met with a student to talk about his paper - Dr' P's office hours are intimidatingly early ;) So basically, I was all feeling like a real teacher there for a bit ;) This was all good, and I didn't even mind much that I'd forgotten my ipod.

I came home and found another e-mail from UCL, though, which basically says that because the English are so wary of maritime archaeology in general, and because piracy is sort of seen as a fringe element of that, that they pretty much aren't going to want to let me do any actual original fieldwork, which leaves me with pretty much naught to work with over there, unless I decide to go with a more historical approach and work out of the history department or even the Greenwich Maritime Institute. Well... This would not do - if I want to teach archaeology I would pretty much need a degree in archaeology to properly market myself, so that isn't something I'm really willing to contemplate at this point. I really believe that archaeology is what I want to do, and also that new material is really going to be essential to making new contributions to the understanding of piracy and identity at this point. My other option is to change my focus to either: something British/local, something from a different period, or both, or something non-pirate related. So if I want to continue along the vein, I need to decide what strand of my interest I want to focus on: maritime identity, piracy, or mariners in a terrestrial environment. Really, when I break it down like that, piracy interests me most because it is a way of looking at the other two, and because the specific context of eighteenth century piracy interests me the most. I just like the early modern period, generally. I don't however, have any ideas about other ways to look at these questions, right now, but I could write back and ask about it. I know they are currently involved in doing research into the cinq ports, and maybe I cold extract a proposal from there.

Well, I'm still dissappointed... I do still have yet to hear anything from A&M, and probably won't for a while. So I will write back Dr Flatman and see if he has any suggestions based on what I've outlined above, Hmmm....

Then I will work on my thesis :o