Needing to get on it

Outside of teaching classes, tutoring, being a good Mommy to my cats, and being a good wife, I am supposed to be working on my dissertation prospectus in my role as a good graduate student. As an effort to get on this, I am devoting this blog entry to this goal. Obviously, one blog entry isn't enough time or energy for what needs to be done for this project, but I think it is a good start.

I am still in the brainstorming stage of my dissertation prospectus. I know that my most general topic/interest is about postfeminism and composition studies. I know that in order to discuss this, I have to explore feminism and composition studies. Right now, I have outlined mentally a number of ways feminist theory relates to composition studies, and I have identified a number of feminist issues in pedagogies of writing.

I think that the next step is to delineate how a postfeminist approach to composition studies would be separate from a feminist approach, whether it challenges feminism, is derivative of feminist ideas, depends on feminism, is an extension of feminism, or even exists. My inclination is to say that I have to explore all of the above.

Perhaps before I can explore the above, I have to answer the question of whether there really is a postfeminist perspective on composition studies? There have been some number of discussions about postfeminism in general, although not very consistent and in a mostly non-academic context. My gut feeling is that postfeminism can be applied to composition studies, but hasn't already been in academic circles.

But, if I go by gut feelings, this means that I am going to have to come up with a postfeminist approach to composition studies with little academic sources, and perhaps some general applications derived from a non-academic context. I would also have to show the reason why this application would be fruitful.

I guess I am struggling with is the idea of coming up with my own view of postfeminist composition studies.