The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation (HFGF): an application toward an application...

The HFGF (if I may)--
is of some considerable interest to me as both an educator and a peace-lover; the foundation recognizes critical work from both the natural and social sciences and humanities which, and I quote:

promise to increase understanding of the causes, manifestations, and control of violence, aggression, and dominance

I will be applying for their dissertation fellowship award of $15,000 (US) in order to complete my doctoral thesis from Purdue University. I am comfortable, and my body is not at rest, as I am armed with the following works (in no particular order, but in a particular theme/pattern):

--Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Scribener's Sons, 1960).
--Hent de Vries' Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
--Rene Girard's Des Choses caches depuis la fondation du monde (Paris: Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, 1978).
--Rene Girard's La Violence et le sacre (Paris: Editions Bernard Grasset, 1972).
--Valentin Groebner's Defaced: The Visual Culture of Violence in the Middle Ages (New York: Zone Books, 2004).
--Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno's Gesammelte Schriften: Dialektik der Aufklarung und Schriften 1940-1950 (S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 1987).

Collectively, these texts should provide me with a scaffold toward a genesis of violence and a theory toward its dissolution and containment but not its resolution; again, violence is ever-always with us and will not be erased any more than adipose cells can be eradicated. As the (medical) scientist is aware these cells, like memes of violence, can ONLY be decreased to a given capacity.

My location is a nice holding cell right across the new Dali Museum where I am also a research fellow; The Campus Grind is a fantastic site--though not quite the Widener--it remains a quaint and quiet enough interstitial s/p(l)ace. And now, let us get to it...

a Return from Exile

It has been sometime since I have posted to my blog. I have received several e-mails and e-texts asking about my silence. Well, I break it here.

Much has transpired in the interval. I am currently finishing up my doctoral studies at Purdue University in the field of Medieval Studies Literature. I am in St. Petersburg, Florida working on my second book, and of course enjoying the "Sunshine State" immensely. The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida has been more than accommodating.

The process for doctoral completion within the discipline of Medieval Studies is a daunting one. First, I am preparing a reading list comprised of primary and secondary sources.

Second, I need to submit a Plan of Study (POS) by 15 October 2008. This Fall 2008 I am teaching English 420: Business Writing and taking classes. In Spring 2009 I will need to take a final class, then study for my preliminary examinations (pre-lims).

These pre-lims will be taken in Fall 2009 alongside my perspectus. If all goes well, by Spring 2010 I will be ABD, or "All-But-Dissertation." I feel like my dissertation is already written in my head, and have begun to work on some preliminary chapters. My goal is to have my Ph.D. no later than Fall 2010.

The life of an academic, and a doctoral student at that, is a bit demanding, but worth the "silence," the long hours of reading and translating ancient languages. The Ph.D. wielder represents the less than 1% population in the country. Anyone interested in such intellectual and rigorous, mental trauma--just enter a doctoral program, but be warned: it will take your life.