I really appreciate having the opportunity to share my work, and I was able to do that last Thursday thanks to the Dissertation Fellows Conference: those of us given a dissertation fellowship for the 08-09 school year were required to provide a 20-25 page excerpt and then give a 15-20 minute talk based on the work we’ve done on our dissertation. The idea is to show how we’ve used the time provided by the fellowship to work.
I’ve been ramming my head into a wall repeatedly while trying to write the study write-up chapter, and it was nice to take a step back and show the other work I’ve done on my “place of place in invention studies” chapter. What’s more, the questions and feedback I received inspired me to rethink my diss outline; I think my new plan is much more of a cohesive whole. I was concerned with how to balance discussions of invention and essays equally, and I think this new plan helps focus the work: I’m focusing on invention studies, this idea of place as a topos in invention studies, before moving on to a specific place: the genre of the essay. Maybe.
So here it is, along with a slightly different title:
Essaying Place In Invention Studies
Introduction: to the diss and in which I define place (vs. space)
Interchapter: The physical places we compose (a photo essay)
Ch. 1: Inventing (a) Place in Invention Studies
Interchapter: blog excerpts
Ch. 2: The Place of Place in Invention Studies (taking chapter 1 through a history of invention studies and connecting it to pedagogy)
Interchapter:
Ch. 3: Placing Invention: Essaying Borderlands (focus on genre and invention before moving into the essay as a genre as one particular place)
Interchapter
Ch. 4: Study write-up
Interchapter
Conclusion
essaying the plains 
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