There is a book to be done, which I'd like to have done, on Southern Catholic intellectuals in the 20th century. I did about three articles toward the book, but I'm pretty sure that I'll never get it done now.
The topic interests me because these writers are sort of triply outsiders in American society of their age. If it is individualistic, liberal, and progressive, they are communitarian, conservative/hierarchical, and have a view of history that is distinctly non-progressive.
The people I have in mind are writers of fiction and non-fiction: Flannery O'Connor, Alexander Percy and his nephew, Walker Percy, Katherine Anne Porter, Allen Tate, Garry Wills, and others.

My first thought when I read about your own heart's darling was to wonder whether you had looked at apocalyptichistorian.com. She's working on the American side of your dream project and we're meeting for coffee to talk about it in the next week or so. I'm sure that she'd be glad to hear anything from you about it.
The second thought I had when I read the comments of you and Jon was -- now, wait a minute, if they didn't have to immerse themselves in language study, they might have to give up the elitist presumptions that most non-Americanists carry around in their breastpockets. Maybe things have changed from the time I was in graduate school, but then it was that there were the Historians and, then, there were the Americanists. Somehow the British historians were exempted from the assumption of language-elitism. Don't mean to carp about this. Maybe it no longer exists around research universities.
And, the third thing, is that, if I had it to do over again, I'm not sure that I would have gone to graduate school -- in history or anything else. I don't have an alternative I'd love to have pursued; and I do love history. But, intellectually, my experience in theological school was superior to my experience in graduate school; and, for me, finding a community of historians who really wanted to communicate about history came much too late in life.

I want to write about the theories of history inherent in speculative fiction. Not just the polemical alternative history stuff and the goofy timeline-changing time travel junk, but the self-contained processes in milieux [is that right?] like Frank Herbert's Dune and Isaac Asimov's Robots and Foundation series'; Heinlein's future history series, Tolkien's Silmarillion and ST v. SW v. B5 (If you don't know, you probably don't want to know) are also issues I'd like to address.

I've also become interested in the Suzuki Violin Method, and the way in which Suzuki institutions propogate fundamentally Japanese culture across the world. I need to start by identifying the roots of Suzuki's method: he claims it's all him, basically, but there's clear antecedents and sources in his writings (and more deeply rooted cultural/social memes) which have now become fundamental to the practice. Then, of course, is the institutional study: how educational institutions enact and instill theory.....