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Description The
Workshop intends to give students a forum in which they can present
drafts of their dissertation chapters for critique. By receiving
feedback from their peers and a faculty member not necessarily from
their field of study, the student can refine their dissertation project
while implementing organizational, methodological, and theoretical
feedback. This course prepares the Ph.D. candidate to enter the job
market and aids in the professionalization process.
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Details The
Workshop, normally taken after the research stage, is required and
presided over by a faculty member. Meeting once a week for two hours,
students present each session and get concrete feedback on their work.
Often students have the opportunity to give their chapters more than
once, implementing critiques and further fine-tuning their
argumentation and organization. The course is graded S (satisfactory)
or U (unsatisfactory) and may be counted towards the required units of
coursework for the degree.
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Educational Purpose This
course allows graduate students to get feedback from faculty and peers
in a more casual, but still constructive, environment. By discussing
their work with colleagues from outside their field, students learn
research techniques, the format, structure, and elements of a proper
dissertation chapter, as well as understand how to pitch their work to
a wider audience. The Workshop also provides a forum in which students
can further professionalize their work in anticipation of entering the
job market.
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Data or Evidence Anecdotal
evidence from students and faculty indicate that dissertation chapters
show significant improvement after the Workshop. Chapters are better
written, structured, more methodologically and theoretically sound, and
adapted to a wider audience than the student's immediate field of
study. The department's placement data also points to the success of
our candidates on the job market.
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Faculty Reflection "The
Dissertation Writers' Workshop is a department institution that
distributes benefits widely. The most obvious beneficiary, of course,
is the author's whose work we read that week. In our case this term,
he/she receives eight careful readings and sets of comments on the
chapter with suggestions on everything from additional sources and
organization of the argument to narrative strategy and the use of
evidence. The designated commentator shoulders the main responsibility
for not only critiquing the chapter but also opening our discussion, a
challenge he/she will face continually in professional life. Every
other participant also presents her/his own reading of the chapter,
getting the experience of critically reading and commenting on the work
of their peers. I have been particularly impressed with the quality of
these comments; participants are reading these chapters carefully and
providing insightful critiques. Although I took on this assignment as a
duty, I have also benefited a great deal from the experience. Our group
includes writers in European, African, British colonial, and Latin
American as well as US history. Participants provide the faculty person
in charge with a great deal of insight into the research lives of our
graduate students across the various fields. Both faculty and grad
students normally work within our own fields. The workshop provides an
unusual glimpse at approaches and problems that might be quite
different from our own. On the other hand, we are reminded, as we need
to be periodically, that we really do have a lot in common as
historians. The workshop is an excellent way to begin thinking about
graduate training in general and the training in research and writing
in particular. The point, I suppose, is that the workshop provides a
lot more in terms of professionalization than a set of comments on
one's chapter." --Jim Barrett, Professor of History
Jim Barrett Homepage
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