Tick Marks

When I started this class, I started making little tick marks next to all the names that were being "name-dropped" in the books and articles we were reading. My thought was that I obviously need to develop a conception of which scholars make important contributions, and that I could make a list of them after I did the reading. Of course now I realise that would mean just creating a huge, decontextualized list. But even as I continued to do the reading and making the tick marks, I find that I am not in fact making a tick mark by every name the author drops. I'm constantly evaluating the names I come across to see if they fit into this idea I have of a discourse between scholars about the topic at hand. This strikes me as largely a good thing, because it means that even when I don't feel like I'm able to engage with the text because it's so new to me, I am in fact developing an idea of what "belongs" in my understanding of the text, even when doing a most cursory reading. So, yay?