More quixoticism

So … my dissertation is coming along. I aim to complete it this spring. (Have I said this yet?)

I might apply to do another graduate degree, in history. MA to start out with; PhD if I really enjoy it. The topic: Latin American constitutions. My goal is to pile up so much knowledge as to become un-unhirable.

My emotions aren’t as frenzied as they were eleven years ago, when I was applying to philosophy PhD programs; still, I’m preparing as diligently as I can, reading books about Latin American legal history. This time I’ll have a better idea of the demands.

I’ve been writing to various historians, gauging their enthusiasm for me. Most of them haven’t replied. I did get a nice email from somebody at the University of New Mexico. I have fond memories of New Mexico, of the day I was in Albuquerque. Everything there was the color of dirt, except for the railings on the interstate, which were salmon-colored. I really did like it in New Mexico.

Karin: “New Mexico sounds lovely.”

JP: “New Mexico is the color of dirt.”

We look at the photos on Wikipedia.

Karin: “Ooooh, New Mexico really is the color of dirt.”

I wrote to somebody at the University of British Columbia, what with my fond memories of Vancouver. That historian hasn’t replied.

My sense is that most U.S. and Canadian Latin Americanists don’t spend a lot of time analyzing constitutions. (They might read old criminal cases, or whatever.) My pie-in-the-sky historian’s dream would be to edit something worthy of being included among the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. There are entries in that series by Gottfried Leibniz, by the Radical Reformers, by Walter Bagehot. Why is there nothing from my own continent? Latin Americans have said interesting things about race, about citizenship, about state-building.

What’s more, they’ve actually tried out lots of governments.