[csaa-forum] If Dissertations Could Talk, What Would They Say?

[Danny Butt]

Good advice (via Terri Senft)...

http://www.csuohio.edu/aaup/news/DissBooks.htm

 If Dissertations Could Talk, What Would They Say?

By WILLIAM GERMANO

You open a young scholar's first book, the one based on his doctoral thesis.
You begin in earnest. Your intentions are the best. But before long, you're
flipping ahead to see just how many pages there are. It's a diversion
tactic, and you know it. The maneuver only postpones the inevitable
realization -- neither your heart nor the author's is really in this.

 Why are dissertations, the firstborn of the academic tribe, so dull? What
does it mean when the best minds can create book-length work that commands
so little interest? The answer, as we all know, is that dullness is safe.

 The dullness question, which Pope might have skewered in an elegant
couplet, is one I've fumbled over in the course of writing a book about
revising the doctoral dissertation. A bodice-ripper, you're thinking. But if
you believe, as I do, that academics are having a hard time figuring out
what they're supposed to be doing these days, the doctoral thesis can't not
be an interesting place to look for trouble. [more...]

http://www.csuohio.edu/aaup/news/DissBooks.htm