Thesis

Today I woke up having just convinced myself that my dream of arriving 44 minutes late to my thesis presentation (and thus everyone had moved on to the next person) was not real.

I finished Romancing the Folk. I'm a little behind on my reading schedule, but that was to be expected. My due date for books to be finished has become Saturday instead of the intended Wednesday.

Anyway - here is my best attempt at summarizing the book and why it might be relevant to my research. I think doing this might be helpful for later when I need to recall what exactly it was that I read.

Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music (Cultural Studies of the United States by Benjamin Filene

Chapter one: Here we learn about the American landscape before the very idea of folk. In fact, folk is a relatively new idea. At the turn of the 20th century, American was not even 200 years old. Inhabitant’s great-great grandfathers had been present at the founding of the country. America did not yet see it’s own culture as being specific to the country verses the place from which they had originated. For the most part of the 19th century folk meant folk from the motherland - specifically the English countryside.

to be continued...