Week One: Whiteboards, Wonderland, and Wittgenstein

This week marked the start of the senior project! With my internship not officially beginning until next week, this week was largely focused on preparation.

On Monday, I made my first trip to tour the American Council of Trustees and Alumni office site, where I’ll be interning. I took the metro into DC, and then made my way down snowy M street to ACTA’s office building. The ACTA suite sits right across the hall from former diplomat John Bolton’s office, and looks out over DC’s Saint Matthews Cathedral. The surprisingly perfect fluffy snow dusting the cathedral made it look like someone had just shaken a snow globe over M street. Inside, I was introduced to the employees I’d be working under and given the chance to explore. First, I checked out the delightful little glass library situated next to the office hall. There’s nothing in the world more exciting to me than a good library, and this one was packed with political nonfiction and all the classic staples.

Next, I was shown the break room. Beside the breakroom kitchen was a wall filled with small hanging whiteboards, each featuring a literary quote or joke written by an employee. Each week, the employees would write a new quote on their board, as a fun little way of sharing what they were reading. At school, one of my favorite traditions is my Quotation of the Week: a weekly literary quote I write on the English class whiteboard for everyone to enjoy. Seeing the same tradition in the ACTA breakroom was a joyous little moment of familiar fun. After that, it became infinitely easier to see myself there in the coming weeks.

After that, I got a first look at the work station they were setting up for me, and read through the numerous newspaper clippings and historical ephemera framed on the walls. Then, we ended the tour by passing through a web of cubicles to the pamphlet corner, which houses all of ACTA’s recent publications. At the end of my visit, I was given a small stack of literary-related ACTA publications to read through during the week in preparation for the start of my internship. Before heading home, I grabbed lunch at The Mad Hatter, a wondrous, Alice In Wonderland-themed local dive that I’m sure will become a routine favorite during my time at ACTA.

The rest of the week was focused on reading. I set up shop on campus at school, sprinkling in work on my Finnegans Wake-based AP Art painting during breaks. Throughout the week, I made my way through the ACTA publications and pamphlets, learning about everything from the decline of Shakespeare studies in modern curricula to the thriving web of underground universities in Central Europe. After finishing the pamphlets, I moved on to reading the theory foundational to my project. I read through Foucault’s The Order of Things , Bourdieu’s Outline of Theory and Practice, and part of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. As I read, I took notes on Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, Foucault’s analysis of the relationship between art and history, and Wittgenstein’s theories of language and reality. Each of these works will help form the lens through which I’ll approach Gaskell’s and Bronte’s novels throughout my project, which focuses on how tensions between habitus and ideology affect self-contradiction in novels.

Finally, I began to read through Lucasta Miller’s The Bronte Myth. Miller’s expansive book is half-biography, half-social-analysis. It explores the lives of the Bronte sisters through the scores of juvenilia and surviving documents that offer a glimpse into the evolving lives. At the same time, Miller analyzes the grand myths and narratives that have surrounded the Bronte’s throughout history, cutting through shifting societal projections to the actual lives that lie beneath the larger-than-life legends. While I await the arrival of the primary sources I requested through Interlibrary Loan, Miller’s biography offers the clearest picture of Charlotte Bronte’s life context and writing process. This will be instrumental when I begin reading through Bronte’s body of work next week, beginning with The Professor on Monday.

In all, this week helped lay the foundation for the kick-off of my official duties and research next week. I had a chance to see the office where I work and familiarize myself with their material, all the while making my way through three foundational works to help inform my research.