The Tweetable Doctorate

[steepholm]

A Facebook friend has taken this widely-shared post in which science PhDs were invited to give "dumbed-down" versions of their PhD theses, and suggested that humanities people might try something similar. A good idea, and I thought people here might enjoy it too. Here's mine:

"Sometimes Spenser makes his ideas act like people, sometimes he makes his people act like ideas. It's not always easy to tell the difference."

Feel free to add yours in the comments.

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Depictions of Richard II in the 1590s demonstrate that no individual gay king is as gay as kingship itself. But that's still less uncomfortable than talking about the succession.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Somehow that topic doesn't surprise me!

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

...I think I'd enjoy reading that!

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

I mostly call mine 'sex and violence,' but my Facebook friend who posted the same thing asked if it might be 'Welsh men in poetry of the middle ages have lots of power and sexual potency because beards.'

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Sounds plausible...

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Totally, right? That's really only a part of a chapter, but given she's a friend from high school who hasn't actually read any of my work I think it's inspired. ;)

[larryhammer]

As a statement, that seems true enough.

---L.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Of course, the interest lies in the ways it's not easy to tell the difference...

[larryhammer]

But of course.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Haven't got one, but I'm adoring all of yours.

Nine

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I only have a lowly BSc (and an FIA).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Final-year dissertations are also most welcome!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

All by examination! I will nudge adaese to put up her BA and MSc titles, though.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I feel like my entire thesis is already dumbed down - I have to work to make it sound incomprehensible by sticking in Foucault and subjectivity.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I have to work to make it sound incomprehensible by sticking in Foucault and subjectivity

Believe me, you're far from alone.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

We're allowed to use undergraduate work?

My linguistics thesis: Australian people living in the city of Adelaide have started sometimes not pronouncing the sound "l" at the end of syllables. The most common hypothetical theory of sound in language doesn't explain this, but two random people with more experience than me have come up with entirely hypothetical extensions to our hypothetical theory of sound in language, and I can show that one of these theories hypothetically works to explain the change! All of this is very hypothetical.

My final English paper: Is it a good thing or a bad thing that humans experience a private, subjective interior consciousness? Philip K. Dick just doesn't know. I am also going to talk about Faulkner because I like him.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Get born - keep head down - die. Essence of Buddhism.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

As you've opened the thread to undergrad dissertations, here's mine from the B.Ed. Degree I completed a few years ago:

My case study of an innovative teaching method shows that adults find learning Welsh hard, but those who put in more hours of practice do better than those who don't. Sadly there is no "one weird trick" to attaining rapid fluency.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

there is no "one weird trick" to attaining rapid fluency.

Another dream shattered. Though I can imagine the ad in my Facebook sidebar:

"Linguists Hate Her

30-year-old Texas mom finds one weird trick to learning Welsh in 6 hours!"

[nwhyte]

There was less science being done in Ireland in 1930 than in 1890. This is because the money ran out. Wealthy landlords who had funded science had to give up their land before the first world war, and the government after independence was famously tight-fisted and did not fund anything. It was not particularly because Catholics opposed science (they didn't), although many scientists opposed Catholicism.
You can still get the book!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Well, there's nothing obscure about that book - being as it is a wonderful source of information for the author of The Gypsy Road, Grenville Arthur James Cole, who has appeared in these pages before, tricycling from Krakow to Coblentz, as all the world no doubt remembers.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't have a PhD, but I could write some summaries of theses I have read. The authors would not always like them.

[owlfish]

People who lived in the Middle Ages mostly did not know that recent inventions had been recently invented; but occasionally they did. Images showing Temperance as a person, with lots of medieval inventions as symbols piled up around her, probably don't reflect contemporary knowledge that they were recent inventions.

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

No PhD, but here's my MA:

"If you closely at gender in children's literature, it all falls apart; this can be explained by that one time George Cooper was naked."

[sue-bursztynski.livejournal.com]

"King Arthur started in early poems as a warrior. By the time Malory came along, he was just a master of ceremonies. Why?" (My Honours thesis. I also compared him with King David. My supervisor liked that very much and it led to a fantasy story in which the young Arthur time travels and meets David...)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Well that sounds like a great real-world outcome from your scholarship!

[sue-bursztynski.livejournal.com]

Yes. Though I haven't sold it yet(haven't found a market for it)

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

What a lovely idea, and I've enjoyed reading all the comments :-) Many years ago, as a procrastination exercise, I turned mine into a haiku, so you can have that:

The Mythical Wars
Are not like the Persian ones:
It's all more complex.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That's a nice variation on the form!