I’ve been trying to
wrap my head around this semester to no avail. This is my sabbatical year.
People traditionally take a sabbaticals to fulfill a goal or do research. Part
of the sabbatical is designed to reinvigorate and restore one's academic
energies, and to provide a base for future intellectual development and
achievement.
My doctoral research
directly addressed the perceptions of the portrayals of deaf characters in
adolescent literature. Since 2006, I
started developing this blog and have continued doing research on the topic. I have enjoyed many accomplishments with my
scholarship and am proud that it is still seen as relevant.
One of the main things
I intend to do during this sabbatical is to continue where I left off with my
dissertation in 2006. To start, I plan
to address the ‘further recommendations’ section I addressed in my dissertation
since it explicitly noted the benefits of asking authors who include Deaf
Characters why they do so. Just a few months after my dissertation defense, I
began this blog. Since February 2007, I have interviewed forty-eight authors
inquiring about their inclusion of their characters. To me, this WHY is just as
interesting as HOW the characters are portrayed.
While I have a fairly
substantial manuscript in place, it has been awhile since I’ve touched the
manuscript. I would like to go through and polish the work that I already have
produced as well as evaluate interviews and book reviews that I have completed
since 2008 when I originally planned to complete and submit the manuscript for
review.
My intended time-frame
includes:
First in August, I need
to make sure that all of the unread books have been read, reviewed and posted
on my blog. This includes interviews with the authors of these books. By the
end of the month, I should have one more review to post (and hopefully an
interview). After that, I plan to review all of my pertinent blog posts
including the book reviews and the author interviews. I’ll look for trends in
the publications (are there similar story lines; is the Deaf Character still
the secondary character whose story is told from the hearing friend, etc.) and
determine what correlations there are between the authors, both Deaf and
Hearing, for their interest in including such characters.
By September, I plan to
rework and polish my introduction chapter incorporating blog posts and
interviews along with any findings from my review.
In October, I plan to
focus on Book Categories & Summaries. In many ways this will be another
attempt at reviewing the data (books, interviews, etc). Creating 200+ book
summaries will be a huge endeavor; however, I have 276 blog posts that I will
actually be able to use. As one can imagine, over the years I have not been
consistent in my format for summarizing books. I plan to revise the blog posts
that I have made and create standardized summaries of Deaf Character books.
By November, I plan to
review the chapters that I had written and begin revising and reworking the
chapters. I honestly won’t know if my previous chapter titles will be what I
follow until reviewing all of the data.
By the end of December,
I hope to submit at least several chapters of my manuscript to a publisher.
I’m hoping to document much of my journey here as well. I’m nervous and excited. And even more than that, I think this topic is such an important contribution to the portrayals of diverse characters. I have many ideas swirling around in my head. For now, I better jot down some notes and go read.
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