It's Official!

Yesterday, I successfully defended my dissertation! It took about an hour, during which time I introduced my project and its significance, and had my committee members (3 in-department members and 1 out-of-department members) ask questions. After each committee member had asked a question, my committee chair and one of the other members gave some additional suggestions for how the project could be revised for publication. As it is, I was pleased to be told by at least two committee members, though all 4 were in agreement, that apart from the introduction, it read more like a book than a dissertation. This means that some of the extra research and "proving" of oneself that is a standard feature of dissertations and makes them seem a bit sophomoric was absent--basically, this was a high compliment, particularly from these particular faculty members! While I was nervous, and didn't quite manage to get out of the house soon enough not to be running about 7 minutes late, everything went very well.

Today, Anton ran into my committee chair (also the department head) while he & the kiddos were waiting for me to come out of a meeting. Anyway, Dr. Killingsworth said that he has never been in a defense that wet so quickly!! And he's been around a while!

Incidently, the title is "Literacy and Its Discontents: Modernist Anxiety and the Literacy Fiction of Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley." Just in case you were wondering!

Now what I have to do is make sure I correct some spelling errors (some the results of Microsoft's efforts to "correct" my typos), make certain I have everything formatted correctly, and submit it to the Thesis Office, after paying their fee and registering for research hours in the summer so I can graduate in August. Other than that, I am officially Dr. Nicole DuPlessis.

Cool, huh?