About the blog title

I probably should have started here, but that shows the scattered state of my mind. The title for this blog may seem to have nothing at all to do with the journey of my research, dissertation writing, etc.

The title is actually an old title that was conceived long before I knew of Blogs, Internet, or even owned a computer. It came about over the course of numerous conversations around the costume shop table at ASU, somewhere between 1982-88. As we stitched away, we chatted as all good costumers are wont to do. We shared our interests and talents, and somewhere along the way I mentioned that I enjoyed tatting. Others commented on their desire to learn to tat, and we sighed as we thought about what a civil occupation that would be on a lovely afternoon...to share a cup of tea and to tat away. The title "Tea and Tatting" came first, but was followed quickly by the current title, as we envisioned brainstorming and co-authoring sordid romance novels as we sat and sipped and tatted.

"Tea, Tatting, and Tawdry Tales" became the symbol for the lovely vision that never quite happened. I claim it now to describe the way I see this blog--as a place to share time and ideas with others that may be interested in what I have to say, that may add their own thoughts, and may be willing to wile away an afternoon together.

In the beginning was the word...or actually, several words

On Wednesday, Mar. 3, I found out that I had passed the third of my qualifying exams for my PhD. This means that I will be moving into the final phase of this process, the research and dissertation writing phase. I'm a little intimidated by this last step, and a little unsure of how I will feel going through it! I decided that as part of the journey, I would start a blog to track feelings, play with ideas, maybe get some feedback from kind supporters, and generally think out loud along the path. Instead of a written journal for some of my research ideas and notes, I'll add those here as well.

My plan for my research is to look at the representations of disability in children's literature. I'm planning to use a narrative research method--to see what the books tell me about the social construction of disability. Currently, I'm thinking that I'll lay the foundation with an overview of disability history--how different models of understanding disability have evolved over time, and how representations of disability in children's books have illustrated the contemporary model of the day. The real focus of the research will be on contemporary books...probably within the last 20 years or so, to get a picture of the current social construction of disability. I'm assuming that I'll be focusing on a small number of texts--most likely less than 10. I'll visit a variety of sources to identify the titles--the reading lists and award winners for the Schneider Family Book Award and the Dolly Gray Award will be good starting points. I suspect that selecting the final book titles will be a challenge--I need to choose books that I can work with and that I won't be sick of after repeated readings and analysis!

Some possible titles from recent readings:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Rules by Cynthia Lord
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco Stork
The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd

More title possibilities to come...