Dissertation Lore
Where It All Began
The American dissertation is a relatively new phenomenon, derived from the German model of graduate education encountered by the thousands of young Americans who studied there in the 19th century. These scholars, many of whom took faculty positions on their return, brought back the German emphasis on freedom of thought, intensive research, and the reporting of results.
The first American Ph.D. program was initiated at Yale University in 1860, with requirements that included at least one year of study on campus, an examination, and a dissertation based on original research. The first recipient was James Morris Whiton, whose dissertation in Latin on the proverb "Brevis vita, ars longa" was accepted in 1861. Handwritten, it was six pages long.
Dissertation Charts Currents In Lyric Poetry
Listen, you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back...
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery...
Well, Life's a Beach . At least that's the title of a 1991 doctoral dissertation dealing with Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," quoted above, and other poems in the "shore-lyric" genre.
Sara Andrews Johnson, author of Life's a Beach: The Shore-Lyric from Arnold to Ammons , received her Ph.D. in modern literature from the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. Her work traced the genre through poems by Arnold, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, and A. R. Ammons. She concluded that the specificity of the setting typically seemed to "balance, complement, and facilitate universality."
Like more than a million other dissertations and theses, Life's a Beach is available from UMI in full text.
Its Own Reward
Some students are willing to wait virtually forever, if necessary, for the satisfaction of writing or completing their dissertations.
Gordon Wallace's dissertation on race-walking helped win him a doctorate in physical education from the University of Texas. A retired army officer who took up the sport after heart surgery, he earned his Ph.D. in 1989 at the age of 79.
Fifty-six years after she fled Nazi Germany, Nina Rubinstein returned to Frankfurt at age 81 to defend the dissertation she submitted in 1933. She was awarded her Ph.D. in 1989.
And there's "the dissertation that wouldn't die." The University of Chicago accepted Frank P. Bourgin's work, comparing New Deal social reforms to the founding fathers' intentions, 44 years after its initial rejection because of allegedly unwarranted conclusions. Since then, other historians have come to share his views, and in 1985 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., prevailed on the University to reconsider. Bourgin finally won his Ph.D. in 1988, at age 77.
Sorry, They're Taken
You're worried about finding an original topic? Well, look at some of the titles already in our dissertation database. (Yes, they're real; UMI order numbers are included.) Elvis Presley: All Shook Up (QVQ90-09636)
- Life's Little Problems...and Pleasures: Watching Soap Operas (QVQ91-02565)
- Electrical Measurements on Cuticles of the American Cockroach (QVQ66-08750)
- Determinants of Flossing Behavior in the College Age Population (QVQ83-21137)
- Classification of Drinking Styles Using the Topographical Components of Beer Drinking (QVQ82-07677)
- Garage Sales as Practice: Ideologies of Women, Work, and Community in Daily Life (QVQ90-32549)
- Finger Painting and Personality Diagnosis (QVQ00-00801)
- Communication Use in the Motorcycle Gang (QVQ89-06234)
- Ritual Drama in American Culture: The Case of Professional Wrestling (QVQ89-18545)
- An Adaptive Surfing Apparatus (QVQ13-06897)
- I Am You, You Are Me: A Philosophical Explanation of the Possibility That We Are All the Same Person (QVQ86-28990)
- Jock and Jill: Aspects of Women's Sports History in America (QVQ79-10447)
Incidentally, there are scores of dissertations about dissertations-- many emphasizing how hard they are to complete. If you're wondering why, you might check out Tom Melesky's tongue-in-cheek article, "The Mechanics of the Ph.D.," in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science (December 1991). He cites a friend who purportedly wrote a dissertation on the relationship between the success or failure of doctoral students and a "previously overlooked variable," car condition. He found a significant correlation between transmission problems and dropping out.
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