The PhD continues with seminars, readings, Japanese studies, and walks – my local park has become very autumny. I got up quite early the whole week, which is the best way to accumulate as many hours as possible before lunch.
There is very little space in the schedule that is unaccounted for. The white space is usually preparation for going out, administration between tasks, or even taking a shower – I try to minimise idle and random screentime. The white space on Saturday morning is actually me cleaning the windows for the first time in several years! What a difference it makes.
Also, I worked (especially Saturday night) and spent some time today doing my taxes for Q3 2021.

Readings
- Hall, Donald E., and Annamarie Jagose, eds. 2012. The Routledge Queer Studies Reader:
- Introduction.
- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. 1994. ‘Queer and Now’. (In Tendencies.)
- Judith Butler. 1993. ‘Critically Queer’. (In Bodies that matter.)
- David Halperin. 2002. ‘How to do the history of male homosexuality’. (In How to do the history of homosexuality.)
- Sara Ahmed. 2004. ‘Queer Feelings’. (In The Cultural Politics of Emotion.)
- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Pages 1–35.
The ‘reader’ had a cumbersome introduction. I couldn’t get hold of the whole volume but found some chapters in their original books. Not so relevant, I’m even critical to Halperin’s divisions, and I found Ahmed quite hard to read. Butler was my favourite, especially the part on how speaking creates the subject (her focus is ‘queer’ as a term).
I started reading Sedgwick’s classic Epistemology of the Closet only on Friday and look forward to what it will give me over the next week! Will try to speed up my reading of it though.
Seminars
- Tuesday: One seminar on reference managers and one on the Latex editor Overleaf, which included a part on reference management that inspired me to blog about it: Choosing a reference manager.
- Wednesday: Optimise your PhD journey. People are dropping out, we were probably less than half this time. (I sort of expected this.)
- Thursday and Friday: Two webinars on data management by the UK Data Service. I’m quite familiar with the themes now, having attended two seminars by the library about this, and also having learned about it in the Research Integrity course.
Japanese
Anki, kanji, news, anime, and:
- Sōmatome N2 reading, from 6-3 to 6-7 = finished that book too!
- Saitō Tamaki, a couple of pages of close reading and translation.
I finished Macross last weekend and it’s really such a beautiful series! This week I have watched some scattered series:
- Shaman King (a few episodes up to 10)
- Made in Abyss (episode 8)
- Kiitarou Shounen no Youkai Enikki (episode 2)
- Bubblegum Crisis (episode 3)
Coming up
My second supervision meeting is coming up, although we have not scheduled it yet. I will then report on my readings so far.
My feeling now
I feel good! Finally. Let’s enjoy the upcoming week!