09|02|2026
master thesis adventures #12
Today is my first day working full time on my master thesis. I am all done with exams, and despite a couple of sidequests I will dedicate most of my time to finish researching and writing my thesis. Since I will be mainly posting about this here's a quick recap of the situation: I am working on a master thesis to graduato from a historical sciences course. I am working on the modern era (circa end of the 15th century to the beginning of the 19th century), and my thesis' theme is centered around the first European explorers arriving in the American continent. My goal is to focus on their expectations of finding monsters and creatures, and how that was then strumentalized to animalize and dehumanize natives to then enslave them. In the past few months I have already read a few primary sources as well as articles and books to gather my sources. I still have A LOT of stuff to do but I have already filled a whole journal of informations and ideas. My plan for the next week(-ish) of work it:
reread all my notes written so far
finish reading T. Todorov's Conquest of America
write notes about that
email my supervisor
Other things on my longer to do list that I am keeping in mind:
give a quick read to the articles a friend gave me
look for a good copy of Marco Polo's Il Milione (not a primary source for my work, but since he is one of the main culprits in convincing early modern era perople that the world is full of monsters I would like to give it a quick read to have some additional background knowledge)
start working on the huge book of primary sources by Italian authors on the time
When all these tasks will be complete I will then recalibrate and decide how to continue with my work. I am very excited to finally work full time on this stuff, I know it will take a lot of energy and time but I can't wait to fully dive in.
