Preparing and Writing Your Visual
Studies Prospectus |
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Ingredients -
Thesis Statement -
Literature Review/Historiography
- Methodology -
Chapter Outline -
Research Plan -
Bibliography -
Formatting, Deadlines -
References for Writing Prospectus Dissertation
A Recipe for Flexibility
Your prospectus serves an important purpose in a number of
contexts. First, you will at some point present this document to your
committee, and meet with them to discuss its contents. Second, a
prospectus can, with some adjustments, be useful for grant
applications. Third, much of the prospectus can likely be used in the
construction of the Introduction section of your dissertation. That
it can and should serve many functions is one of the reasons a
prospectus is difficult to write. Keep in mind, however, that the
primary goals for the prospectus remain the same, for the most part,
in each of the aforementioned contexts. The prospectus should set out
four things: 1) Your argument and the stakes that will drive your
project; 2) Your sources and the contribution of your work to the
field of Visual Studies (and likely other fields); 3) Your
methodology and why it is the best orienting frame for your project;
4) The structure of your dissertation (ie, a chapter outline) and how
every chapter is a necessary link to building your argument.
The importance of the prospectus to give you and your
committee an idea of the stakes of your dissertation and to determine
the place of your work in Visual Studies cannot be underestimated,
however, you should not consider the prospectus a word-for-word
contract either. Some of the most productive moments, in fact, occur
when you change some of your original plan-don't be afraid to do so.
Keeping in mind the fairly flexible nature of the prospectus document
is valuable, because many graduate students strive to create a
"perfect" prospectus that they can use as-is throughout the
dissertation process. This can be a dangerous goal and likely will
lead to the delay of prospectus completion. Writing and research for
your prospectus forces you to figure out some key elements of your
dissertation, but finishing your prospectus allows you to
begin your dissertation. Determine with your committee a deadline for
your prospectus.
The following guidelines can be seen as a sort of
"recipe." Each "cook" might add her or his own spices, or alter some
of the ingredients. Remember that each advisor will make individual
recommendations, so consider this document a basic starting point
from which you will concoct your own, unique "dish". Communicate with
your committee about what their expectations are and ask them what
they recommend based on your particular project. Also please take a
look at other students' dissertations (particularly at the
Introduction), both in Visual Studies and other fields, to get
additional ideas on writing a prospectus.
Before getting to information on the sections of a
prospectus, here are three overall questions and concerns to consider:
Worthwhile? Who is the audience for your project? What is its significance? What gaps does it fill? Does it build on the work of others?
Possible? Is your project possible?
Consider difficulties you might encounter in regard to accessing
sources, making claims, and completing your dissertation in a timely
manner.
Length? This is usually determined in
conversation with your committee. A prospectus in the UCI Visual
Studies program can run anywhere from 8-25 pages, and this
determination could depend on a number of factors. Work closely with
your committee to decide what makes sense for you.
Prospectus Ingredients
- Thesis statement
A prospectus thesis will likely be anywhere from 1-4 pages
and will identify your main argument in straightforward, concise
language. The thesis section of a prospectus should do a few things.
First, and potentially even in the first sentence, state as clearly
as possible what your dissertation will do and what it will argue.
Second, explain the stakes of your argument and its importance to the
fields with which you see your dissertation in conversation. Make a
claim for the relevance of your argument-as groundbreaking, as
building on another argument, etc. Why is your solution to a given
problem essential? Why might it be necessary to make that argument
now? What will be the impact of your work on Visual Studies (and
other fields)?
Show your committee (and future grant committees) that you
have a clear understanding of your argument and the value of your
overall project. The more straightforward you can communicate your
thesis to your committee, the easier it will be for them to make
recommendations and provide guidance.
- Literature review/historiographical
essay
If the thesis is meant to as concisely as possible assert
the essential questions, claims, and arguments of the dissertation,
the literature review is meant to open up those claims into one or
many fields of inquiry. These are the fields in which the work -
research, methodological frameworks, etc. - of the dissertation will
be completed. The purpose of the literature review is two-fold.
First, the review shows that you are familiar with relevant
literature within each field. Second, the review should define the
reason why the dissertation would be a unique scholarly project that
advances the field of Visual Studies (and likely other fields), by
neither duplicating nor avoiding relevant articles, scholars, and
arguments.
In order to define the broadest possible "field" in which
the dissertation will be produced, it may be useful to think in terms
of several historical and theoretical registers. For example, a
prospectus on early cinema could look at pre-cinematic technology,
early photography, the history of audience reception of film,
economic history of cinema, national and international film
circulation, and the aesthetics of early movies. Another prospectus,
focusing on feminist art, might look at theories of representation,
gender in photography and painting, the history of feminist art
practices, theories of medium, the cultural politics of art, and the
specific modes of the practices of women artists.
The literature review is not meant to be a list
of authors and texts that will play a part in the dissertation
writing. Rather, it is a way to situate the project in a larger
scholarly context. To complete the literature review, one might
proceed by reading relevant journal and monograph literature,
focusing on recent works but also working with older, especially
primary, sources. Beyond the narrowly defined "relevant" literature,
it may also be useful to read contextually, looking for literature
about the same time period, region, object, etc. When reading for the
literature review, keep in mind a few organizing questions. What does
each text tell you about the time, place, or phenomena under
examination? What archival sources does your research point to? What
methods/methodologies does the literature employ?
This section of your prospectus should make clear your
interpretation of the fields in question and how you situate your
work vis-à-vis specific authors and/or texts. Remember, the
purpose of the literature review is to set a field of study, and to
thus organize a discursive matrix around your specific topic of
examination.
- Methodology
The primary purpose of the methodology section is to
assert the way(s) in which you will use/apply the material that is
the basis of your research to your project. Whereas the literature
review outlined the fields of inquiry, the methodology section is
more selective, argumentative, and individualized to meet the needs
of the dissertation as a whole. Other scholars have stakes in their
methods, and your dissertation will proceed, at least in part, from
the decisions you make in terms of these stakes. This does not only
have to be a "use" model. Your dissertation may also disarticulate an
interpretive or methodological scheme in terms of your object of
analysis. In either case, this section should clearly set out your
methodological approaches and their potential for making your
dissertation more robust. This section should outline the ways in
which you will proceed with writing. How do you plan on weighing
various kinds of evidence (newsprint, visual media, scholarship,
etc.)? What screens will you employ to account for bias and/or
inaccuracies in primary and secondary sources?
Many of the questions of methodology are worked out when
you are actually writing. Nobody is expected to have a defined, set,
and unalterable method before they actually begin working on the
dissertation. What is required in this section is a general direction
of methodological inquiry, with reference, of course, to specific
works. Depending on the kind of dissertation you are writing, the
literature review and the methodology section may be substantially
similar. If, for example, you are writing about the various
interpretive schemes one might apply to early cinema, then the
theoretical work itself is the object of analysis. In this case, you
may want to collapse these two sections into one. This is by no means
required, however.
- Chapter outline
Before describing the chapter outline, it is important to
consider its purpose. The chapter outline forces students to think
carefully about the architecture of their dissertations, but it is
very likely to change as the dissertation gets on its way. Your
committee does not likely expect the exact organization, let alone
the chapter titles to stay the same for your dissertation, but the
practice of laying out the sections and considering carefully their
order reminds a writer of the attention to detail required of
dissertation construction. In addition, outlining your chapters is
important in that it allows you to think through your project and
gives you a chance to take notice of ways in which your dissertation
might be too broad or too narrow.
The way you organize your chapters tells your readers
something about your approach. Consider how what you set out to do in
your thesis section might gel with or contradict what you lay out in
your chapter outline. How does the chapter organization reflect (or
not) your intentions? What type of organization does your overall
thesis suggest? Does it make sense to put the chapters into larger
sections?
The chapter outline should not only list chapters, but it
should also provide a paragraph or so for each chapter to give your
committee an idea of each chapter's content, as well as your logic
for placing a given chapter first, second, third, etc.
- Research plan
This may or may not make sense to your committee to
include in your prospectus, but it is helpful to write out,
nonetheless. Quite simply, this section explains when and how you
will write your dissertation. Do you need to spend some time in
archives before you write? Do you foresee writing two chapters
together because of their shared content/goals/foci? If you need to travel
and/or require funding for your dissertation, how and when might this
happen? What will you do if you are not able to travel? As with many
other sections of your prospectus, your research plans can change
quite a bit, but setting up a research plan might make you aware of
goals that are too far-reaching for the amount of time available at
UCI, or you might realize that you need to write more than one
chapter at once, requiring you to make important temporal and
psychological adjustments.
- Bibliography
This section at the end of the prospectus should contain
all primary and secondary sources you have identified at this point.
There are many ways to organize a bibliography, and it is definitely
a very good idea to keep this consistent throughout the dissertation
process to save yourself a lot of effort. Make sure to discuss this
with your committee as you write your prospectus!
UCI documents/requirements for
dissertation
References and Guide Books for
Dissertation Writing
- Brause, Rita S. Writing Your Doctoral Dissertation:
Invisible Rules for Success. New York: RoutledgeFalmer 2002.
- Clark, Irene L. Writing the Successful Thesis and
Dissertation: Entering the Conversation. New Jersey: Prentice
Hall 2006.
- Davis, Gordon B. Writing the Doctoral
Dissertation. New York: Barron's 1997.
-
Hale, Constance. Sin and Syntax: how to craft wickedly
effective prose. New York: Broadway 2001 [UCI Lib: PE1408 .H299
1999]
- Madsen, David. Successful Dissertations and Theses: A
Guide to Graduate Research from Proposal to Completion. 2nd ed.
San Francisco: Jossey Bass 1992.
- Rudestam, Kjell Erik, and Rae R. Newton. Surviving
Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process.
Newbury Park: Sage 1992.
- Sternberg, David. How to Complete and Survive a
Doctoral Dissertation. New York: St.Martin's 1981.
- See http://wid.ucdavis.edu/thesis/biblio.html for
information on some of these texts
Prospectus Guidelines compliled by
Heather Murray, Tim Seiber, Nicole Woods, Peter Krapp
Last Update: Spring 2007
Aspects of this prospectus document were influenced by: http://plaza.ufl.edu/edale/Notes%20for%20dissertation%20prospectus%20writers.htm |
