A month into the PhD process, I
thought it might be a good idea to reflect on how it's gone so far. What have I
done? What have I achieved? Well. I've done a lot of reading. And I mean a LOT
of reading. I've started my Italian for Art Historians course. I've started to
audit undergraduate lecture series and attend departmental research seminars and
other events. I've met some absolutely astounding people
with whom I've had challenging and stimulating interactions. This is all
amazing, right? Right?
Except it's also really tough.
Coming from a historical background and almost falling into History of Art through
a series of extremely happy accidents means that I have a lot of catching up to
do. Everyone seems to know exactly what their thesis is because they've spent
their academic career working up to this point. I wrote my undergraduate and
masters dissertations on early modern English witchcraft and have now made a
huge leap of faith into Italian domestic interiors because I loved it so much
when I chanced upon an MA module on the subject. They're already going on
research trips because they have the necessary language skills and knowledge about
their source material. I can barely say 'Buongiorno,
mi chiamo Hannah' and I'm expecting to be able to go off and get to grips
with Florentine archives. Art historical theory is second nature to them
because they have been immersed in it from the beginning of their undergraduate
degrees and I'm struggling with working out what an object actually is.
So why am I even bothering? How
can I even begin to call myself an art historian given all of the above gaps in
my knowledge and skills base? These are questions that I've asked myself on numerous occasions
over the last couple of weeks, and it turns out that they are not particularly helpful ones and neither is
comparing myself to those around me. I have, however, come up with some
tentative answers.
I am bothering because I love it.
I fell in love with Italian cultural
history during my undergraduate degree and then with domestic interiors during
my MA. I jumped when this project was offered to me and taking the chance to do
this PhD was the best choice I ever made. Yes, I might have to work a little harder
than others, I might have to attend undergraduate lectures to get my
knowledge base up to scratch and I might
have to wait a little while to go on a real research trip. But you know what? That's
fine. A little hard graft never killed anybody and this is really making me
appreciate the achievements I am making: the other day I looked at some
potential source material in Italian and it didn't completely baffle me. I'll
take that. The support that the department is providing to get me up to speed
is absolutely wonderful and already it's working wonders. I need to stop seeing
my interdisciplinary background as a disadvantage - it has given me so many
skills that I'm constantly applying and has brought me to this point in my
academic career.
As for whether or not I'm an art
historian yet... the answer is a resounding no. But that's fine too. I recall
that during our first meeting as a cohort of PhD students Amanda Lille, my
supervisor and Chair of Graduate Studies for the department said that she
didn't feel like she had found her voice as an Art Historian (with capital
letters) until well into her academic career. These words fill me with hope and
optimism and I will certainly be making more of an effort to carry them with me
in future. So in the meantime, I'm happy to say that I am not an art
historian... yet.
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