I wrapped up my New England Regional Fellowship at the end of May, and other than a few loose research ends that I will be making more library trips this summer and fall to wind up, I've mostly completed the initial stage of my cotillon project: gathering lots and lots of cotillons so that I have enough of them to make some meaningful analysis of the genre.
In the initial hunt-and-gather process, I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I've collected over a thousand cotillons from France, England, Germany, and America. I've not yet finished tracking down sources on this side of the Atlantic, but I've made a substantial dent in them. Material in England will be addressed later this summer. Material in France is a whole other problem that will at some point require a really lengthy visit. I still have American sources in specific libraries to track down, and more work to do at the libraries with the largest collections of French material. But overall I am very pleased with my progress.
Indexing and analyzing the cotillons I have already collected is going to take me at least a year, I suspect. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what data I want to track for each cotillon.
In general, though, I have a basic grasp of the qualities of cotillons across different eras and regions. I can see evolution, especially in the changes. I have figured out some of the more mysterious figures, and will probably figure out quite a few more as I have time to cross-correlate descriptions and diagrams. I have a good idea of how generic cotillon figures could be and how variable the changes could be. I have a completely different understanding of how to think about steps in late eighteenth century France and possibly, by extension, elsewhere. I have nicely specific evidence of transmission from France to England and England to America. I've expanded my research at the early end to look at the origins of cotillons, and I have some new theories on origins which are still fragile but have great potential.
In the process of collecting all these cotillons, I've also stumbled across some fascinating non-cotillon material, some of which is already trickling out here and in my workshops.
So, the research itself is going very well.
And that creates an interesting personal dilemma for me.
I cut back my teaching time substantially this year to have time to spend in libraries. I'll be able to pick up my gigs again without too much trouble; good things are already being planned for fall and winter. But I found out something about myself this year:
I really like spending time in libraries doing research. I like it a lot. I may like it more than teaching.
And that is actually a bit of a problem. Since research fellowships for independent scholars do not grow on trees, I can't spend all my time doing research if I still want to eat and pay the bills. And properly writing up all this research (the cotillon material is clearly going to be book-sized) requires yet another enormous chunk of time that I do not have. I am supposed to be looking for more teaching gigs, not fewer.
I've already arranged my life so that I spend more or less all my time doing things that are at least related to what I like doing. Much of it is spent doing precisely what I like doing: research, writing, and teaching. Do I want to make dramatic changes to enable a higher proporion of research and writing time? Is it even possible?
I can see some potential approaches.
I can see some gigantic problems with them.
This will require some serious thought.
Stay tuned.
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