Introduction

Author: Carolyn Fay

Producer: AC Capehart

System Administrator: AC Capehart

ImaginingSleep.com banner image adapted from "Lune Triste," c. 1910. Anonymous.

The Somniloquy album cover created by AC Capehart, from his photo of our daughter, March 2007.

Thanks to AC Capehart, BK Marcus, and Rebecca Strzelec for their advice and input.

Special thanks to Samantha Fay Capehart for napping so regularly.

About this Site:

I have often been a difficult sleeper. Especially in graduate school. In the spring of 1994, I took a seminar on the vampire in French literature. I noticed that vampires tend to prey upon sleeping subjects. Why? That question led me to a dissertation topic, a Ph.D., and a decade-long investigation of sleep and dream. My research, originally anchored in literary, medical, and philosophical texts of 19th-century France, quickly branched out to other time periods, other cultures, other disciplines. In the spring of 2003, I had the opportunity to develop and teach an interdisciplinary course on sleep and dream at Franklin and Marshall College. I taught “Sleep and Dream” three times at F&M. The course moved with me to Penn State Altoona, where I offered a different version in the comparative literature program. ImaginingSleep is an evolution of these courses, re-imagined and expanded for a broader audience, independent of any school, freely available to anyone with an internet connection.

That’s right. This is a free course. I’m putting these materials, and my own synthesis and analysis of the subject matter, out in the world for the intellectually curious. Even just the mildly curious. You can follow a little or a lot of the suggested readings, activities, and audio lectures. However, you can not (currently) apply this course towards a university- or college-granted degree. That may change one day. The internet has revolutionized the way humans communicate, access, and distribute information. I think it has only just begun to affect the way we think about education. If nothing else, the internet has made it easier than ever before for individuals to educate themselves on their own time and in their own way. And so, I offer ImaginingSleep for the autodidacts, for the wanna-be autodidacts, for students in the traditional sense, and students in the broad sense, as we are all, hopefully, learners at all stages of our lives.

And also, for the insomniacs, for whom sleep is ever elusive, always desired.

About the Author:

My name is Carolyn Fay. I am an independent scholar living in the San Francisco Bay area. I hold a Ph.D. and M.A. in French literature from the University of Virginia. I earned a B.A. in Humanities at Swarthmore College. My publications to date deal with French literature, including an article on Sleeping Beauty, forthcoming from Marvels and Tales in 2008. I have given many scholarly presentations on sleep and dream in literature. See my academic vita for more details. You can hear me talk about sleep and dream in nineteenth-century France on Chicago Public Radio's Odyssey here.

In 2003 I had the opportunity to develop an interdisciplinary course on sleep and dream at Franklin and Marshall College. That course was the seed for this web site. Researching, developing, and teaching the course allowed me to expand my inquiry beyond the disciplines of my formal training. Indeed, approaching the topic of sleep and dream from the position of a “French professor” was often frustrating, because sleep and dream cross cultural and disciplinary boundaries. And so, while my work is grounded in the humanities, I have also ventured out into the arenas of natural and social science.

I have also ventured out beyond the academy. I recently left a tenure-track position at Penn State Altoona to follow my husband to his dream job with Linden Lab (makers of the dream-like “Second Life”). The move allowed me to re-imagine how I might contribute to scholarship and continue to teach in a new and creative way. The move also allowed me to stay at home with my now two-year-old daughter. Yes, the independent scholar is also a full-time stay-at-home mother. This means that I work on ImaginingSleep when my daughter sleeps. It is a most satisfactory situation. Except when she wakes up early. Or doesn’t nap. Sleep, in one way or another, is always a hot topic in our household.