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robin_anne_reid) wrote2009-02-23 10:34 am
robin_anne_reid) wrote2009-02-23 10:34 am
A multimodal analogy coming from having read lots of drafts during the last week
Am working with three doctoral students at various stages of their dissertations, giving comments to drafts in the last week. And I think I have discovered a useful analogy for thinking about how chapters relate to each other! When I first began my diss. I conceptualized it as the equivalent of five seminar papers; a useful conceit to keep from freaking out at OMG I have to write a BOOK!
But that conceptualization needs to shift as the chapters develop because of the need to weave the argument throughout the book--and not only the argument, but the context of the argument (i.e. academic writing is dialogic; you not only have to make your argument, but you have to explain where your argument fits in the scholarly context). Academic writing has lots of redundancies/repetition, especially at the book length level.
I tend to insist on well developed proposals, then suggest students work on body chapters first (with the argument that writing the introduction which as to be an overview of the book is easier once the body chapters are written--and things do shift from proposal to final draft). Then I talk about the introduction as mapping what is to come. The conclusion chapter comes last although the "conclusions" drawn from the process of interpretation are of course foregrounded at the start of it all. (I'm talking about one disciplinary approach to dissertations--specifically in this case literary analysis--my students are working on books by Zora Neale Hurston, Louise Erdrich, and J.R.R. Tolkien, so what I have to say probably is not applicable to other disciplines--it's not even applicable to the creative writing thesis I direct! Not sure how it would relate to Comp/Rhetoric dissertations!)
I suddenly realized in a recent email that if that introduction is an overview, like a "global" map, then each body chapter is like a "section" of that map, "blown up," and developed on its own, making some connections/reference to features in the total map (Introduction) but also providing much more detail in that specific portion of the map (which come into focus with the closer view).
The review of literature (which has to occur in both the introduction in an overview and in parts in the body chapters) is therefore acting as a reference to other maps that have been made created about the work but do not show the same features/elements/aspects!
In this analogy, it's important to remember maps are interpretations of the world, not "factual" "one to one" representations (a colleague of mine does units on the different conventions of maps, especially those created in the Middle Ages compared to later ones, and how to read maps since map-making conventions change from culture to culture, including the perfectly arbitrary fact that in our culture, North is at the top of the map/globe!).
But that conceptualization needs to shift as the chapters develop because of the need to weave the argument throughout the book--and not only the argument, but the context of the argument (i.e. academic writing is dialogic; you not only have to make your argument, but you have to explain where your argument fits in the scholarly context). Academic writing has lots of redundancies/repetition, especially at the book length level.
I tend to insist on well developed proposals, then suggest students work on body chapters first (with the argument that writing the introduction which as to be an overview of the book is easier once the body chapters are written--and things do shift from proposal to final draft). Then I talk about the introduction as mapping what is to come. The conclusion chapter comes last although the "conclusions" drawn from the process of interpretation are of course foregrounded at the start of it all. (I'm talking about one disciplinary approach to dissertations--specifically in this case literary analysis--my students are working on books by Zora Neale Hurston, Louise Erdrich, and J.R.R. Tolkien, so what I have to say probably is not applicable to other disciplines--it's not even applicable to the creative writing thesis I direct! Not sure how it would relate to Comp/Rhetoric dissertations!)
I suddenly realized in a recent email that if that introduction is an overview, like a "global" map, then each body chapter is like a "section" of that map, "blown up," and developed on its own, making some connections/reference to features in the total map (Introduction) but also providing much more detail in that specific portion of the map (which come into focus with the closer view).
The review of literature (which has to occur in both the introduction in an overview and in parts in the body chapters) is therefore acting as a reference to other maps that have been made created about the work but do not show the same features/elements/aspects!
In this analogy, it's important to remember maps are interpretations of the world, not "factual" "one to one" representations (a colleague of mine does units on the different conventions of maps, especially those created in the Middle Ages compared to later ones, and how to read maps since map-making conventions change from culture to culture, including the perfectly arbitrary fact that in our culture, North is at the top of the map/globe!).
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In fact, the rev. of lit. has to be in both places, intro and body chapters, but in different ways: it provides a context for the overall project in the introduction, and in the body chapters, specific info on the topic of that chapter has to be provided. I'm not sure dissertations are meant to be readable: I think the purpose is to show an academic committee that the candidate has mastered certain academic skills, including the ability (in this type of discipline) to contextualize one's argument within the scholarly literature.
Dissertations are clunky; that's why publishing from one's dissertation in the humanities usually takes so much revision.
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It's not as though they didn't make me write a 40+ page prospectus and defend THAT.
However. All downhill from here. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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