first post! the post that hurts the most

Okay, so I'm from Oklahoma. Feel free to hold that against me, God knows I do. :) All kidding aside, my hometown was a lovely shade of normal. Edmond, Oklahoma, if we want to get all specific about it. It's the kind of place you think you'll finally appreciate once you've moved on, but….well, I don't know how long these things take, but I've been in Fort Worth for 5 years now, and I've yet to catch myself pining for Edmond. My parents and their ever-growing number of furry replacement babies (cats & dogs, not literal furry babies) - well, that's a whole different story all together. So pretty much my hometown was nothing special, but my family and friends were and remain to be the most awesome on the planet. Just sayin'.

Anyway, I've always loved to read and to write, but mostly to write. I think that might have to do with some control freakitude; I've always been more interested in creating text than consuming it. This also explains my fascination with fandom, fanfiction and adaptation studies. As a kid, I always found myself continuing and adapting my favorite stories in my head. As a teenager, I started to write these stories down, and soon discovered that I wasn't alone. As an undergrad, I shamefully participated in several fandoms, producing fanfiction under the table in between seminar papers and projects. And finally, as a graduate student, I've chosen to focus on this type of writing for my thesis in an apparent attempt to point out how incredibly influential it all was in my development as a writer.

But, I digress.

Oh, books. I tend to be very annoyingly "low brow" when it comes to "my favorites". It's unfair, really. I'd love to be able to tout my intelligence by rattling off a list of writers that I enjoy, but it seems phony and hey, I can't help that my taste for crappy chick lit has prevailed! I've given it very little attention these past few years, it's quite persistent. So yes, I love Bridget Jones' Diary and Douglas Adams. But! I tend to enjoy just about everything.

Three Books That Have Deeply Touched My Life:

• Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (if not only for the fandom, sweet fandom)
• Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (plays count!)
• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard (plays have to count!)
  

It may be of interest that my BA (also from TCU) is in Radio/TV/Film. I'm very interested in the connections between film and television (poor radio!) in particular, with literature and the study of rhetoric. This may help explain my terrible taste and penchant for media-related topics of study. But hey, at least I'm upfront about it, yeah?

My goals for the semester are pretty straightforward: thesis, thesis, thesis. And I'm very excited to see the past three semesters of work really coming together and finally making sense. I'm realizing how much I really took away from each class, and I suspect that this course will be no different. I'm looking forward to finding connections between subjects in this course, and what I'm researching for my own work. And I think it may be appropriate to give a shout out here to Dr. Sarah Robbins, whose course on Authorship back in Spring '10 really sparked my interest in periodical culture in early America. I'm excited for this semester because I find all this stuff just so incredibly interesting, and it's so nice for genuine interest to be the overwhelming feeling going in (rather than fear, anxiety or certain death).

I've got to be vague with this next question, because I've been at TCU for the past five and a half years, so….let's just say that communication is the cornerstone to a healthy classroom environment….and that lack of communication will, more often than not, bring out Emilee the Anxious. It's not pretty. But hey, as long as everybody is on relatively the same page, I'm comfy with tons of different teaching styles. I just like to know what is going on…you know, usually. :) :)

Three Things I Know About the US During 1770-1830:
-Frank Leslie (publisher of periodicals! pretty good, eh?) was born (1821)
-American Revolutionary War
-And I'm a fraud, I know nothing of history….

Three Things You Ought to Know About Me:
I'm a cat lady, but I've only got one cat, so it's one of those situations where all of my cat lady tendencies are focused on one very spoiled cat. This, is Binx.


Also! I've been blogging for a long time. My livejournal account has been active since 2005, but I had another (incredibly embarrassing) one years before that. But I've deleted it. Because it was absurd.

And finally, although I'm currently trying my best to focus all of my love and attention on this wonderful degree, I am hoping that one day I will be able to focus anything at all on writing a novel. I'm about 83% sure I'm not bad. I'd also like to finish the screenplay I started back in undergrad. So, lastly and somewhat obviously, Creative Writing: I dig it. :)