Recently people have asked me, "What DO you actually study at Cambridge?" Good question. Sometimes I wonder that myself. Since the majority of my posts on this blog have been about my awkward moments, travel adventures, or the food I've eaten, I thought I'd take a moment to actually clarify that occasionally I DO do work at Cambridge. But only rarely.
The above photograph shows the books I recently checked out from the library. Ah, Cambridge libraries. What's it like going to a Cambridge library? Imagine you combined Labyrinth, Black Friday shopping, Harry Potter, and a particularly strict convent that has taken a vow of silence. Yup, that's it. Terrifying and glorious at the same time. These books are mostly for the two dissertations I'm doing this term. One is on Octavia Butler's beautiful time travel novel, Kindred. I'm looking at trauma theory (see the Caruth books) and tragedy. The second dissertation is on H. G. Wells (who I am finding more and more brilliant as time passes) and his writings on the human-animal "problem" (focusing, primarily on pain and vivisection). Grim work, no? Indeed. But interesting.
The few other books which don't pertain to those topics are for the papers I'm "taking" this term: tragedy and contemporary. The tragedy paper covers everything from the Greeks and Shakespeare to the modern day (hence, Sarah Kane). Contemporary covers anything written 1996 or later, which means I get to read a lot of books that have been on my To Read list for years now: Wolf Hall, The City & The City, The Raw Shark Texts, The Gargoyle, Fragile Things, Elizabeth Costello, and The Road, to name a few. I'm unendingly pleased with myself for taking the contemporary paper because not only do I get to watch 28 Days Later for homework, but "contemporary writing" covers such a wide range of topics, it's unreal. The lectures I attended covered the following: graphic novels, Japanese pornography, theoretical physics, geometry, the apocalypse, ecology, psycho- (and psychotic-) geography, late capitalism, technology, non-place, gonzo journalism, architecture, obsessive personalities, serial killers, and hauntology. Just a course on literature? I think not!
Taking the contemporary paper really has made me realize how fluid literary "movements" are, and it becomes difficult to pin down what it means to be "contemporary" or "modern." I love studying the literature of my generation, knowing that ideas we discuss and about which we write will form the future analysis of this time period's literature.
To keep this from getting too long, I'm going to end there. My work is quite expansive and equally eclectic, but I like it that way. I may have spent my first term here grumbling that I couldn't specialize and do an MPhil or Master's, but in the end I'm blessed that I was able to study such a wide range of literary topics under some of the brightest minds in the world. Even if my reading list IS longer than I am tall.
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