029: on wandering

What I'm dedicating the next five years or so to

As many of you know, in September, I will be starting my doctoral program at NYU in English. A few people have asked me about what I’m studying and because I haven’t refined my elevator pitch, I always blurt out something about the flaneur and American liberalism. Those are the buzzwords of my proposed project but I thought I would take a second to give some insight into what I’m trying to get at.

At its core, my project is interested in the intersections of spatiality and subjectivity, of how we consume spaces and are consumed by them. Initially, I thought I would pursue the idea in connection to the concept of female monstrosity via Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (oh how it whispers)! But after following that line of inquiry for a while, I didn’t feel like I had anything new to offer.

I began to figure out the contours of my proposed project in fall of 2020, a whole year before I actually started working extensively on my application. However! In hindsight, I’ve been developing this idea for the entirety of my academic career.

It all begins with the flâneur.