Below is the pseudo grant application I wrote after total exhaustion and project disgruntlment finishing the season of writing actual grant applications last fall. This fake project statement acheived brief internet fame when Could Be A Model e-mailed it to two of her friends.
[Note: Actual dissertation project not a joke. (Damnit!)]
Your Small American
Project Statement
My dissertation project, tentatively entitled “Berlin 2003-2007: Lesbian Capital of Europe,” will probe the conceptual difficulties in establishing and even in thinking fulfilling lesbian relationships across linguistic and national divides and in the face of rampant vegetarianism. Judith Butler has noted that it may be easy to get a date given that gender is performative and the subject has always already invested in the temporal quickening of a dyke presentation.
[1] Yet Butler’s notion conflicts with everyday lived experiences, where lesbianism and asking out German girls is complicated by inabilities to speak German, inabilities to figure out who is whose ex girlfriend, one’s perceived national identity as an imperialist American just looking to slut around then return to the states and not call; and the resulting complexities imbricated in these conflicts. What chances does the subject have to get laid, when the subject always already does not exist, and doesn’t even speak German?
My preparation for this project began with my undergraduate coursework in History and Political Science, as well as many failed attempts to date, or even to meet, Barnard students, which led me to examine problems of lesbianism, agency and subjectivity in a senior thesis entitled: “Dreaming the Lesbian Subject: Post-Structuralist Reality or It’s Not My Fault That She Has A Girlfriend.” Two summers spent conducting preliminary research in Berlin have afforded me the opportunity to make important trials of local paradigms that organize dating, making out completely drunk in bushes in parks, and the production of life-altering, soul-crushing, endless drama. In addition, this project will be aided by an offer of sponsorship from C-----, renowned international lesbian, who has invited me to visit her part-lesbian WG (communal house) where I will be able to refine my project while participating in such activities as L-Word watching, vegetarian cooking, and beer drinking. In addition, top scholar N----, international lesbian of mystery, who speaks no German yet has a German girlfriend, has agreed to advise this project.
Despite these auspicious initial supports, this innovative project depends on funding from your organization to support up to three years of deep emersion in Berlin lesbianism. With support from your funding organization, this project will re-shape the conceptual frameworks that have directed research into lesbianism, nationalism, commercialism, post-structuralism, temporality, affect, embodiment, and dating cute central Europeans.
[1] “Linguist/Temporal/Corporeal Performativety: Stop Whining About How You Can’t Get a Date, You Are Not Even A Subject, It Does Not Matter, Do You Know What I Am Saying?” Social Text 54:1 (Fall 2004).
