probably the funniest part of academia is when you can slap clever-sounding words together put them through a search engine and learn that yes the thing you just invented is indeed a Highly Developed Concept already. like i've been researching intersections of emotion, literature & imperial legitimacy in romantic era britain for a while (thrilling stuff i know, riveting) and since i have a broad scope but a small brain one thing i do is make these giant mind maps. like just to visualize to myself how the prevalence of a Theme in literature (say, contagion, corruption, historicity) could allow us to draw conclusions about cultural moods (how's britain feeling? maybe a little anxious w all this talk about apocalypses and decline?) that could influence parliamentary debates. so NOW, half a year into making mind maps to explain my own thought processes to myself so i can draft better chapters, i was finally like "wait why don't i put these mind maps into the chapters themselves. as illustrations. and why don't i make them part of my methodology if i'm putting so much work into them anyway. hm but what could i call that method. maybe affective mapping. oh that's buzzwordy. i wonder if that exists" and wouldn't u know

lessons to be taken away from this: 1. if it has "affect" and "-ing" in it it probably exists as an academic method 2. this institute developed a fully free to use and v minimalist and intuitive mapping software you can use for your research or your fic outline or for whatever so check it out if you're into mind maps ig?