Aysha, Week 9, Paper Revisions

The criticism I received on my (incomplete) first draft was extremely, extremely helpful – I’m hoping for most all of it to be incorporated in some way. The biggest piece of advice (which I think I received from everyone, especially Professor Kollmann) is to be a little bit more modest in the conclusions I try to draw from the limited amount of information I have on Catalina de Erauso and the little I know about how her book was written and with what precedent and aims in mind. I plan to be more open-ended and merely suggestive about possible interpretations of what her book reveals about her, her life, and her time. I also think it would be a better idea to take Professor Kollmann’s advice on splitting the paper into two or three sections, starting with background historical research on the time and circumstances that are highlighted in the memoir and then discussing the memoir in particular and what it might suggest about Catalina and the world in which she lived. Suzanne suggested reading literature on the carnival at that time, and I am leaning on drawing heavily on that to set the historical stage into which Catalina enters, though I may also include a heavy historical chunk talking about either other memoirs at the time or more general societal conditions (possibly splitting this historical section in two pieces). Basically: I plan to make the paper seem more historical, as it should be! And the other piece of advice that will definitely also be used: further entertaining quotes from Catalina herself! I'm planning to do serious work on this over the weekend (probably like a lot of us), and I'm hoping these ideas will both get solidified and teased out by Monday.

Also, I did find the process of reading and preparing a short presentation on Alice’s paper to be helpful, particularly because it forced me to engage with another student’s work, and seeing how much historical background she included in her paper helped me to see how my paper needed more of it!