I asked three people 'in the field' to read my first chapter, which I finished drafting a couple weeks ago. Of the seven chapters in the manuscript, I think this might be tied for the most surprising argument--at least as far as Burke studies goes--so I needed committed Burkeans to have a look, to tell me if they 'buy it.' And get this: they all read it and got back to me in less than two weeks. Five, seven, and ten days, to be exact. Pretty amazing, especially when one of those readers is a busy assistant professor finishing up her first year and working on her own fabulous research, one is a journal editor and a department head who just got promoted to deanhood, and another is an associate dean with a boatload of graduate students. I know this isn't typical, but I still suspect that this field (i.e., rhetorical studies) is remarkably collegial.
Oh, and they all bought it, hooray.
