Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

November 22, 2023

Abigail Arnold | Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Natalie Cornett earned her PhD in History from Brandeis in 2021. She has now transformed her dissertation into a book, The Politics of Love: Gender and Nation in Nineteenth-Century Poland, which will come out in 2024 from Cornell University Press. The book is a history of a nineteenth-century educated Polish women’s group, the Enthusiasts, centered in Warsaw but with branches throughout Polish lands. It follows their trajectory through a very tumultuous part of Polish history and their attempts to create an independent womanhood despite the political and social atmosphere around them. Cornett explores their relationships with each other and how they formed a homosocial circle, as well as their discourse about what it meant to be a Pole and a woman in the nineteenth century. Cornett is currently a lecturer at McGill University, following a two-year postdoc there. She joined GSAS to talk about the journey from dissertation to first book.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

When you were in your PhD program, what did you do to set yourself up for success afterwards? Were there any resources at Brandeis that were particularly helpful to you?

I knew I wanted an academic job and was constantly applying, starting in my third or fourth year. In the History department, the graduate students worked together with some faculty to hold professional development workshops. In one of these workshops, some junior faculty members came and shared their application materials so that we could see what a cover letter and academic CV looked like. We also workshopped each other’s CVs, which was very helpful, so I have the faculty and other graduate students to thank for that. I used the GSAS professional development office a few times to get feedback on my CV and also got feedback from Academic Fellowships when I applied for a Fulbright, which was a very intense process that led to lots of feedback that I incorporated into my work, CV, and cover letter. Faculty members from History also read over my materials for me.

Tell me about the role you’ve had at McGill since graduating. How did you balance the responsibilities of your postdoc with revising your dissertation into a book, and what did that timeline look like?

My postdoc was a research fellowship funded through the Quebec government. It was a two-year grant that was mostly directed towards funding the beginning of a new, second research project and gave me time to focus on my research.

Almost immediately after my defense in June of 2021, I drafted my book proposal. This is a really strange document that no one really tells you about, and I used a lot of books about how to turn your dissertation into a book to help me in the process. It’s important to include information about other titles in your field and how your work differs from or aligns with them. I also incorporated feedback from my defense, especially feedback about how to talk about my dissertation topic in a broader, more accessible manner. I got a lot of feedback from my peers as well. The process opened me up to what I might change or add to my dissertation to make it more accessible to a wider audience.

For the first year of my postdoc, I did not teach, and in the second year I taught only two classes, so I had more time to devote to the book project. I was actually contacted by one university press in the fall of 2021, but they wanted to go in a different direction with the project than I did. I contacted about 12 publishers myself, and Cornell in the end got back rather quickly. They were very interested, and I sent them my full manuscript. The big changes to the manuscript happened when they sent me feedback from two reviewers and their editorial board. The direction of the manuscript is influenced by feedback, but I also stuck to my guns for some things. In the revision process, I added more archival work and rearranged and reframed chapters to flow better. I didn’t completely start from scratch.

At the beginning of 2023, Cornell gave me the go-ahead, letting me know that they wanted the exclusive rights to the manuscript and that I had until August 2023 to make my final revisions. The book is now in the production stage and comes out Sept 15, 2024.

What do you wish you knew when you started?

I wish I knew not to be hesitant or scared about it. When we think about a book, we kind of get scared – “Oh my God! It’s going to go out to a larger public!” – but the key is finding a press and editor who vouch for you and get your project. It is important to make sure to do as much research on publishers and editors as possible. I emailed lots of people in Polish history who had recently published to get their thoughts, which is how I knew about Cornell’s impressive portfolio and supportive process. I have been really lucky with my editor, who has just gotten the project, especially its gender aspects and my desire to make it a comparative and European history project, not solely a Polish one. Do the research and ask people about their experience with presses–and they will tell you! Every proposal I wrote was tailored to the specific press, but you still want the press to get the project as you envision it. Fit is really important.

You recently received the First Book Subvention Award from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies to support the publication of your book. How did this come about? Did you apply for the award?

This is an award the publisher applies for and that is awarded to them to help with the costs of publishing. Bethany Wasik, my editor, reached out to me and suggested applying, and we worked together on the application. The award came through quite quickly.

Did you ever find it challenging to stay passionate about a topic you’ve been working on for so long? What did you do if so?

I’ve been working on this project for eight years, and I’ve always liked it! Instead, my biggest challenge was not being convinced that others would love it as much as me. Its focus on Polish women in the nineteenth century and on figures who even in Polish historiography don’t really come up makes it an outlier. Gaining confidence in my project and its audience, especially through attending conferences and presenting, helped me a lot. Seeing people’s reactions at conferences as different as the Institute for Literary Studies in Warsaw or the National Association for Women’s Studies in the USA showed me that everyone could find a different in. My project incorporates questions about gender roles, emancipation and nationalism, and women’s education–it has a lot of layers, which keeps me excited about it. I did the project I wanted to do, not a project that I thought would be hot on the market.

What’s next for you?

I am applying to all sorts of postdocs to develop my second project more fully. This project focuses on Rosa Luxembourg, international socialism, and the Polish chapter of her political activities–I’m rethinking her relationship to the question of Polish nationalism. I have a chapter related to it coming out in an anthology next year. I’m also applying for tenure-track jobs and continuing to focus on the academic track.

What advice do you have for current students who are looking to continue in academia and make books out of their dissertations? What should they be doing while they are still writing the dissertations?

I would share the advice I received from Professor ChaeRan Freeze in my second year: “Do not write a dissertation; write a first draft of a book.” This is a different approach to the dissertation project that is more broadly focused on people beyond your committee but still includes key dissertation elements, such as extensive methodological and literature review sections, that likely will be reshaped or even cut altogether when you’re turning the dissertation into a book later The issue is really scope and framing: a book is trying to appeal to a wider range of people than a dissertation. I’d tell students to go for it with whatever they love and to look at other books in the field and see what they like, don’t like, and can be inspired by. Look at book proposal samples and see how they are framed. Look at books about how to do a book proposal. Think about how you’ll tell the story of your topic in a more accessible way that can be approached by a press and make note of the publishers producing the books that connect with your project.