The Dissertation & the Discipline: Reinventing Composition Studies

Writing a dissertation can be joyful and reaffirming, but it can also feel like wandering into a labyrinth where dimly lit pathways twist and turn toward disaster. What is a dissertation supposed to look like? What is a dissertation supposed to do? Who is supposed to-or allowed to-decide?

The Dissertation & the Discipline brings together both dissertation writers and advisors to grapple with these questions and formulate answers. Each chapter highlights the intersection of power and politics in this high-stakes rhetorical scene while exploring and describing a range of productive strategies. Critiquing standard narratives and traditional assumptions, The Dissertation & the Discipline offers a radical critique of dissertation writing and advising-and challenges us to consider how these practices can be deployed to expand our understanding of the very nature of Composition Studies.

Nancy Welch is the author/coeditor of the Boynton/Cook titles Living Room (2008), The Dissertation and the Discipline: Reinventing Composition Studies (2002), and Getting Restless: Rethinking Revision in Writing Instruction (1997). She is Professor of English at the University of Vermont, where she teaches composition, rhetoric, literacy studies, and women's studies. She has also published a collection of short stories, The Road from Prosperity.

Catherine G. Latterell is an assistant professor of English at Penn State University, Altoona.

Cindy Moore is an assistant professor of English and director of composition at St. Cloud State University.

Sheila Carter-Tod is an assistant professor of English and associate director of composition at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.