One week to go...

So far, I've written nearly all of one paper and sizeable chunks of two more. I have a strong outline for the fourth, and at least a sense of direction for the fifth and sixth. I am trying to remind myself of this tonight, as this whole process is hardly uplifting. It is hard to feel confident after grappling with theory for twelve hours daily (excluding time spent thinking while cuddling cats, doing dishes, swimming, and running) then being told by a professor that this way of doing comprehensive exams is "too easy." That stings. I tell myself each day that the next I will write for longer, but I cannot physically and emotionally do so. Twelve hours a day seems to be my limit, and I truly don't know how other people work for longer at a computer. I think the only thing I am capable of doing for more than twelve hours each day is, honestly, sleep. I wish this were a test just of intellect, and not resolve and pain tolerance.

Hopefully things will look up tomorrow. My goal is to get a near-final draft of my state formation paper (since the professor for that field is unconcerned about word limits, this one is likely to be about 4500-5000 words - almost twice the maximum the department sets out as he has asked me to do two essays rather than one, but I cannot answer the question in a complete and theoretically informed way in less space.). Hopefully I'll have completed that by the mid afternoon and can then draft my other paper for that field, edit them both on Sunday, and then allocate Monday to last touches but primarily to my four remaining papers. Hopefully my head will stop pounding and let me do so.

One of the texts I read (Carlson's Home is the Hunter) said that for the James Bay Cree, giving up hope is self centred as it implies a sort of omniscience. I know my exam fields like nobody's business, but I am hardly omniscient. So I will hope, and keep hoping.

Anxiety and Acrostic Poetry

Complex
Overthinking
Marathon of
Practically no
Sleep.

Retrospectively, I'm noticing that today I was actually fairly productive; my documents for my four questions so far are 2185, 1063, 2384, and 961 words. That's not bad. They're not fabulous words - disorganized, and resembling a liminal space between notes and outline rather than outline and draft. But they're there, on the page. I'm going to bed early tonight in the hopes that that will help me write more coherently tomorrow. The struggle to balance elements in these exams is weakening my confidence, letting it rupture, and through its little holes creep those thoughts of "there is no way I can pass" and "what will it be like when they tell me that I've failed?" This is impostor syndrome at its finest, I hope, rather than a reflection of my analytical abilities. I mediated my anxiety today by working at the gigantic table in the local cat rescue where I volunteer. I have a cat at home, so it was the people I was seeking out as much as the animals - there is a sense of community that helps with the isolation of writing, and it is nice to pop out of the theorizing and analysis for a few minutes to discuss more on-the-ground problems such as how much insulin Monty the diabetic cat should be getting, and quickly scribbling out signs to remind other volunteers to put cans of food into the refrigerator. It's prevented me from such destructive behaviours as cleaning the house until my hands go raw, or running so far that I put out a knee - neither of those has ever happened to me, and I'd rather this not be the first time!

One positive realization I've had today is how helpful it is that I've been teaching while doing comps. While it is undeniably added stress, it's also been a venue for me to think about concepts, and see new perspectives and sources. It's paying off, and not just financially.

Unwieldy

It is the week of exams and we are weak from exams
We watch all our knowledge leak from our heads
As we seek to uncover one thing or another
That we know that we know, so then WHERE DID IT GO?
[written when I wrote my first middle-school midterms at age 12, and still oh so true]

If I had to choose one word to describe comps so far, it would be "unwieldy." Liberalism is not the only octopus here - all of my ideas have too many limbs, flopping all over the place, and the writing I've done is almost certainly going to be either bloated with examples and thus too long, or lacking in examples  but at the word limit, and vague. Finding a happy medium is going to be a challenge here! At this point, I've figured out the direction I'm going in, and more or less which sources I'm using, for all of my questions.

Today, at 8 AM sharp, my sex and gender questions arrived in my inbox. These weren't a surprise for me; they are basically asking me to extend the analyses that I've done in previous work for this professor, combine various ideas, and so forth. I'd already semi-drafted but never submitted a reading response connecting heteronormativity and violence, and the drafting I did pre-comps will pay off now. One of my questions is about the production of knowledge about sexuality, gender, and heteronormativity. The other is about violence and colonialism.

Challenges:
- Balancing my desire to go for a run with the need to work - I've been jumpy this week, and would run 15km each day if I had the time. Instead, I ran errands to get a bit of fitness in.
- Balancing the need for examples with the need for brevity.
- Keeping my analyses for my various papers distinct. They are threatening to tangle together - I don't want to see my knitting drawer appear in a computer window! Of course certain things like liberalism and colonialism will likely bleed, to some degree, across all six essays, but I don't want to appear fixated on any single issue.
- I'm working on how to conceptualize identity for one question, and what to do about issues of intention for others - I don't want my papers to read like conspiracy theories. This is partly an issue of agency in the face of a totalizing state. What is a state? There is so much theory that I have not read, and my anxiety over not being 100% versed in any particular body of theory is anxiety-provoking.
- Ergonomics. I don't have time this week to go out shopping for new office furniture, but sitting and working for 10-12 hours each day for five days consecutively is taking its toll on my back, wrists, and elbows. I'm wearing braces while I type, but that slows down my typing so I take them off. I can't quite coordinate chair height/monitor height/feet touching the floor in a way that works for me, even with the new cow-patterned collapsible footstool I bought today. I probably need a desk with a keyboard pullout, a raised monitor in addition to my laptop, and a chair that fits somebody my size. I get up to stretch regularly, and alternate handwriting notes and typing drafty paragraphs. I hope my body doesn't refuse to cooperate by the end of this!
- Balancing my intellectual and my emotional thoughts about violence.
- Balancing time between the six essays. I've been focusing too much on the liberalism one and the knowledge production one; there are four more that need more of my attention, and I do hope to sleep intermittently between now and the eighteenth.

Goodnight...

To add on to my first comps update

Emotionally, let's be honest here, comps are a roller-coaster. It's hard not to think about the stakes for this; it's more than just an exercise - it's a prerequisite for remaining in the program, and there are no second chances. It seems, though, that anxiety is par for the course; I was actually relieved, more than terrified, when a prof in my department told me his comps horror story this afternoon. Apparently he had to go to the hospital after he was done to be re-hydrated on an IV! It was reassuring, in a bizarre way, to learn that a level-headed and competent professor, who obviously made it through very successfully, was quite likely even more anxious than I am, to the point of serious dehydration (I am still drinking water, and I doubt the inevitable paper cuts will bleed coffee). I've had a few friends tell me their stories, also with traumatic undertones - there are some pretty ghastly tales out there from intelligent people who have passed these exams. Thus, the anxiety is normal, just part of the process, move along, nothing to see here. I probably will need to be reminded of this on a constant basis as I become more exhausted and thus more self-critical.

So far, I've eaten at least three meals a day, gotten in cardio (anxiety, as some friends have reminded me, does NOT count as cardio - I'm talking running, and swimming), snuggled my exceptionally fluffy foster cat, and I slept last night, for more hours than I did in the final week of my masters thesis. The most serious incident of crying had far more to do with an onion involved in making lunch than it did with liberalism, or gender. I am probably being a bit of jerk to my peers, who are also busy as heck at this time of year; the looming 24000 words in 12 days marathon is making me self-centered. Can one be self-centered if one is aware of being self-centered? Is that a contradiction in terms? I'll leave that for another day.

I'm cycling between bursts of inspiration and the pits of intellectual despair, but it'll all come out in the wash. I think it's bedtime.

Comps - the week begins!

I call this comps "week" but it's really a longer period. Started this Monday, and the oral is on the 23rd. I hand in my last two essays on the 18th, then spend the long weekend trying to read the minds of supervisors and figure out what they might ask me. To quote Eliot (as I am prone to do!), April is the cruelest month. 

I'm writing this as an update for the very small circle of academic friends who want to know what I'm up to, my family who probably feels like I'm neglecting them this month, and, primarily, for myself to keep track of my thoughts. This is in addition to the pages upon pages of notes I've scrawled out in the past two days. 

My first questions officially arrived Monday morning, 8AM sharp. Not exactly what I was expecting in terms of content and style (I was expecting something asking me to analyze primarily the historiography, rather than the history - this appears to be the inverse).

I'm not putting the questions themselves on this blog, as I don't know if I'm allowed to (I'll also have to check before blogging the final papers I write - I don't see why I wouldn't be allowed, as it's my own work, but better safe than sorry). Here's the gist of them, though, for my Canada field:
1) Explain the rise of the modern Canadian state, referring to the liberal order framework.
2) Explain the evolution of gender identity and the family in Canada, with reference to ethno-cultural differences.

Analytically, I like to start answering questions by tearing the wording apart. In this case, "rise" and "evolve" were the first things to get under my skin, as they imply a sort of progression and positivity that I don't feel is appropriate for either the state or gender identity. Next comes "modern" and "state" and of course "gender" and "identity" and "ethnocultural." Constructed, important words.

I am tackling each of these questions in what may appear to be a roundabout way, but one that makes sense to me after reading all three of my field lists. For the first, after discussing some elements of state formation in Upper and Lower Canada surrounding the Rebellions (this section makes me nervous, as my field supervisor specializes in this, and so I'd have to draw on one of his own books! Commenting on profs' books in front of them is terrifying.), and of course a brief discussion of the liberal order framework, I'm going to segue into the imposition of a colonial state in "frontier" areas of Canada - the reserve system and wildlife conservation, as interlinked initiatives, will be a key focus here. I see one text, Curtis's Building the Educational State as almost a microcosm of my wider argument. I have no intention of returning this book to the library until after I graduate. When I initially read it, I seriously disliked it as it was very much focused on settler society; I've more recently warmed up to it, theoretically. Inconveniently, it is the very text my field supervisor argues against in his own work. This should be awkward, but at least provoke discussion in the oral exam! At first, my fear for this paper was gathering up enough material. Now, the challenge is hemming it in a bit - each essay can be only 3000 words.

For the question on gender, one of my challenges is to avoid approaching this in overly post-structuralist terms, as the supervisor for this field is not as inclined toward that sort of theory as I am. Nonetheless, in comes Judith Butler, an impostor from my sex and gender field...several of the texts talked about gender in relation to pageants, parades, rodeos, and various other shows, so I'm taking it in the direction of a quite literal performance and considering symbolism of gender identity. I haven't put in as much time for this paper as it's more within my comfort zone than the state formation one, so stay tuned to see how I can make this analysis take shape.

Among my challenges is avoiding the descent into intensive interpretation through metaphor. So far, I've made these topics make sense to me by thinking about dinosaurs, octopi, and geodesic domes. For the sake of amusement, here is the liberal octopus:

Conceptualizing liberalism is like dressing an octopus in formal wear

Tomorrow, I'm likely going to step back from my liberalism paper and tackle the gender paper in more depth, along with the two essays for my sex and gender field. I plan to brainstorm to the not-quite-an-outline-but-more-than-scattered-notes stage for all six essays, then write them in order of soonity (not a word, drawing a blank) of due date. There'll be some jumping around analytically, and possibly a sci-fi cartoon of dinosaurs devouring Science World (a geodesic dome). Stay tuned!

135 books - and today, no more!

[Sing to the tune of 525600 minutes, from RENT]

More than a thousand cups of coffee
Can't even count the cups of tea.
Two fluffy cats, and six fuzzy kittens.
How can I count the books for my PhD?
In essays, and meltdowns, and Facebook-based melodrama;
In 60 photos of Canada geese.
Bird by bird, and coffee by coffee,
So many comps books
And still no peace.

500 kilometres of anxious running
Forming ideas in the swimming pool.
How many hours of circular pacing?
How can I quantify this reading duel?
In reading-hikes, cafés,
(Don't tell me the wifi password),
Discussing books with cats, birds, and goats.
35 afternoons of radio opera,
Seventeen-fifty pages of notes. 

Blasting concertos on overnight repeat
As I chew and destroy an innocent pen.
Impromptu hair dye and chocolate ice cream.
Can I measure my work using Beethoven?
Or lentils, and chickpeas, and bottles of maple syrup?
Or piles of books on an unswept floor?
Nineteen long months of reading, reading...
135 books, and today, NO MORE.

Forgot to post...residential schools

I finished this one...oh, a month ago? Still to come, shortly: Heteronormativity/constructing knowledge about sex and gender, and native/newcomer relations. After that, land/treaties, indigenous resistance, indigenous methodologies, gender and indigenous peoples. For this one, my aim was brevity, as I can write forever on this topic.

The key differences in these complementary monographs stem from their motivations. Tsianina Lomawaima, partly inspired by her father’s experiences at the Chilocco Indian School, has written an oral history of this school that focuses on students’ memories to emphasize life at school, rather than policy. John Milloy’s work was drawn from his contribution to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, and thus largely uses records from residential schools and the government agencies and churches that formed them. This resulted in his quite exhaustive history of residential schools in Canada, showing how government actions and inactions, in collaboration with churches, formed and maintained a harmful system. Margaret Jacobs has pulled out maternalism as an ideology that underpinned the removal and institutionalization of indigenous children. In her transnational study, she follows maternalism as a thread that pulls together the work of reformers, children’s experiences of having their bodies and sexualities policed, the scrutiny placed on indigenous mothers, and resistance to child removal, among many other facets of these institutions and the people who built, maintained, and were incarcerated within them. Ultimately, Jacobs points to intimacy as a critical element of institutionalization; by removing indigenous children, she argues, maternalist social reformers reconfigured children’s and parents’ intimacies with one another and with their land, undermining indigenous land claims. Milloy makes similar arguments, noting that residential schools aimed to install European “meanings” to change children’s ontology (37) while operating on a misguided presumption that they were “parenting” indigenous children.

As Lomawaima was the only one of these historians to foreground children’s experiences, it is unsurprising that she is the only one to conduct her own oral history research. Lomawaima presents appendices detailing her research methodology, including a comprehensive but flexible list of questions that guided her interview. Some interviewees had prepared statements, written or oral, then responded to questions; for others, it was a more conversational process (176). Jacobs does not conduct her own interviews, but draws extensively from interviews conducted by other researchers, particularly those for the Bringing Them Home report (bibliography). Milloy’s work does not use oral history - he cites concerns about properly supporting his informants afterwards (preface). Instead, he pulls children’s voices from school files, conscious that these are filtered through adult Euro-Canadian officials. While oral history could certainly augment Milloy’s work, I noticed remarkable consistencies between his accounts from official documents and those presented by Lomawaima and Jacobs; drawing from oral recollections would not likely alter the substance of Milloy’s arguments.

Residential schools and other institutions were a means of restructuring children’s intimacies: away from parents and land, and towards trappings of white “civilization.” The severing of intimacies and ontologies is a common theme in these three studies, and one that plays out in Milloy’s, Jacobs’s, and Lomawaima’s discussions of maternalism, relationships between students, the monitoring of children’s sexuality, and as Jacobs notes, land claims. While intimacies are less explicitly central to Milloy’s work, which focuses more on policy and practice, it is a persistent undercurrent that underpins his argument that residential schools were, by their very nature, abusive. The intimacy between children and the land is one that Jacobs particularly pulls out. The link of schools to land claims is, I think, quite indisputable; that this happened through changing intimacies was a new idea for me. Jacobs’s idea here is quite convincing, even though it does not appear to be explicit in the policies that led towards child removal.

Maternalism is the central focus of Jacobs’s book, which outlines how white women’s maternalist ideologies shaped their role in child removal, and their complex relationships with indigenous children in the United States and Australia. Maternalism was key to many women’s decisions to become involved in child removal. Some of these women had genuinely benevolent intentions, which sometimes metamorphosed into concern that their own actions were harmful, as she points out in a final chapter on resistance to child removal. Often a concern about children’s welfare was mixed with women’s self-interest - child removal was a means of escaping from the restrictions on middle-class women’s careers, and of avoiding marriage in an attempt to gain independence. Particularly in Australia, Jacobs argued, this placed maternalist reformers at odds with male authorities who made policies. Jacobs presents maternalism as a counterpoint to the paternalism of the state, in its presumption that it could parent indigenous children. This presumption is also central to Milloy’s work, which meticulously documents how the state was an unfit parent.

While maternalism aimed to reorient children’s intimacies towards white school staff, and away from their parents and communities, this was seriously undermined by the abuses faced by many children. Instead, children’s resilience is clear in the formation of quasi-familial relationships between certain students. These are most apparent in Lomawaima’s work, where children’s relationships were central to their experiences at Chilocco school. Chilocco students had great loyalty to one another, generally superseding their relationships with school staff (Lomawaima, 48). Unsurprisingly for a school environment, Chilocco students recounted bullying. Some relationships between students thus had a critical protective element. Lomawaima describes how gangs protected the very youngest boys, making tribal affiliation particularly important for these students (157)

As well as monitoring and attempting to restructure children’s relationships with their communities and one another, colonial institutions focused on children’s relationships with their own bodies. The monitoring of sexuality, particularly for girls, was a common concern for school staff. Accounts from Chilocco and Australian institutions recall staff monitoring menstruation as a way of keeping tabs on girls’ sexuality, and sleeping arrangements were intended to prevent masturbation, as well as contact between boys and girls (L. 61). Sometimes this separation of dormitories was also hazardous to children’s health and safety, by locking them away from the washrooms and preventing a means of escaping in case of fire. This monitoring was based on a dual construction of indigenous children’s sexuality as deviant and as vulnerable, a construction that itself led to child removal, which was sometimes premised largely on a need to protect girls’ sexuality from unscrupulous indigenous men or white settlers.

All three historians position residential schools and other institutions as a site of struggle. Indigenous people resisted the removal of their children in many ways, often hiding children from white visitors. In response, authorities used rations as a coercive tool, or obtained children through force or deception. Once in the schools, indigenous children displayed a remarkable capacity for resilience. Some students developed at school an identity beyond that of their individual tribe, as their experiences entrenched their identity as an Indian, or an institutionalized child (“dormitory girls” in Jacobs). Many children took pride in their work in agriculture or domestic service, although some also aspired to careers that residential schools did not intend for them. American communities were particularly keen to claim residential schools as their own, claiming agency over their own education.