Brain Tricks and Dissertations
By Gayla Marty
Writing your dissertation or thesis? Stuck? Lonely? Finding yourself spending time on everything but writing?
Eight students said yes to at least one of those questions and signed up for the first interdisciplinary graduate writing seminar this fall, Academic Life as Pragmatic Action (Hist 8960). Two more seminars scheduled for spring semester are open now for registration.
The seminars are part of a new initiative designed to give graduate students the support they need to write.
"It's a trick your brain plays--something seems crystal clear, and then you write it down and you don't get it at all," says Josh, a doctoral student in the first seminar.
A Visit to the Seminar
On a Wednesday in October, Josh was up in History 8960. But first, everybody else checked in to report on their writing for the week.
Their disciplines include history, political science, education, and Spanish literature, and they're at different points in the process: prospectus and grant-writing as well as actual dissertations.
Rhiannon had produced an outline. "I can focus late morning or mid-evening," she reported. "And when I say I wrote for two hours, it probably came in 15- to 20-minute chunks."
"I write an hour a day, every day," said Jeff. "In the past, I've been an extremely organized writer, but writing an hour a day makes that more difficult. And if I push it off until evening, it's pretty much a disaster."
Vanessa had given a chapter to two writing partners in the class and outlined her second chapter. In the process, she was thinking a lot about styles of thinking in different languages.
"The cross-cultural differences in organizing content are huge," she said. "And also the question of what is the literary sensibility in different cultures?"
The professor, Thomas Wolfe, paused to remind the class about an earlier class exercise, when they discussed different styles of powerful writing.
"What's the plan for writing this week?" he asked Vanessa.
"Well, that's a problem," she said. "I have two people visiting from Spain."
"I'm in grant-and-fellowship land," reported Rhiannon. She's trying to finish a key chapter of her dissertation. Her class writing partner made a suggestion that got her moving in a new direction.
Louise wrote several pages of an outstanding paper and registered for a brown-bag seminar on grant-writing.
"I'm intrigued by people who can be very systematic," she said. "I'm very stream-of-consciousness. When I do come up with something more academic, it seems lifeless."
Wolfe acknowledged that writing is indeed a mysterious process.
"What's going through your head when you re-read something you wrote and think, 'That's not right,'?--and then three weeks later, you might read it again and think, 'There's something there.'"
Meanwhile, Kristi had spent part of the past week getting her computer loaded with the software she needs.
"But have you put anything on paper?" Wolfe asked.
"I have two pages done now and I need five to go to the Cheesecake Factory this weekend!" she laughed. She made a deal with herself to enjoy a little reward if she wrote a certain number of pages.
Finally, it was Josh's turn. Everybody had read his 20 pages posted on the course Moodle site, a draft of his dissertation prospectus. They talked for nearly 45 minutes about voice and audience, statistical sampling, the decade of the 1870s and its relationship to the present, the difficulty of breaking the materials into chapters, his own anxieties and passion about the topic, and his ambitions for the paper and for his discipline.
"I'm convinced this is going to be a great dissertation," said a classmate. "It made me very interested in the topic and your ambition for the project."
As the hour passed, the talk became more animated and relaxed, gaining speed, humor, and intellectual depth. At the end, Josh was smiling.
"I didn't like what I produced, but this was extremely useful," he said, thanking the class.
Designing a Writing Seminar
History 8960: Academic Life as Pragmatic Action was designed by history professor Thomas Wolfe to mix readings, small-group support, and workshops for writing in progress.
Wolfe, whose own field is modern European history, signed up in response to the call for new interdisciplinary dissertation-writing seminars sponsored by the Graduate School. He's one of 12 faculty members selected to teach the 10 seminars based on their records of interdisciplinary research and teaching and on seminar plans that meshed with student interest shown in a 2008 survey.
He decided to try it because he remembers how hard it was to find a community when he was writing his own dissertation.
He also wanted to work with the reading in philosophy that he's been doing lately--by Richard Rorty, William James, John Dewey, and Cornell West--which he suspected could be helpful to new dissertation writers.
"These writers help us think about the university and what academic life might be about," says Wolfe. "There's always a wider world that our writing connects to."
Wolfe is clearly enjoying himself and the class, integrating the readings, pairing writers for support, designing exercises to help students out-trick their brains, and being part of the development of new scholars and scholarship.
"Even when you're writing a dissertation, you should stay aware of that wider world," Wolfe says. "Your dissertation won't be your last thought on the topic!"
More Seminars to Come
Nine different seminars will be offered over academic years 2008-10. The fall 2009 seminars--open now for registration--will be
You can also find out about the spring 2010 seminars. For more information, see the interdisciplinary seminars home page and the Graduate School Writer's Nexus.
Gayla Marty is a writer in the Graduate School.
Photo courtesy of Hist 8960 class.
If you have questions about the Graduate School's interdisciplinary dissertation-writing seminars, please contact Char Voight or Anne Carter. |
