A letter from the future…

I put together this short dissertation form proposal as a way to start a conversation with my committee, and I’m glad to be able to share that my committee supported me in my efforts. In subsequent years, this project evolved into a multi-part metacommentary, teaching text, and ongoing collaboration project. I learned a lot along the way, and if you compare the completed dissertation to this proposal, you’ll see the different paths that emerged for me once I moved beyond the traditional dissertation genre. Writing a nontraditional dissertation was the right fit for me, and I often feel grateful to my past self for pushing past my fear and leaping into the unknown.

I’ll be honest: I’d envisioned the form proposal you’re reading as a simple proof of concept—a way to say to my mentors, “hey! this is what reading a project like this might look and feel like!” I’d thought I would delete this text once the ‘live’ version of the dissertation came into being. Since then, however, I’ve been surprised to learn from folks that they have found this project while embarking on their own alternative dissertation journeys and that others have cited it as a resource to think with. For this reason, I’m leaving this little draft as-is: earnestly out there in the world, warts and all.

The revised project—or, rather, the project ‘hub’ for the set of texts it grew into—is titled Undissertating: Re-Envisioning Participation in Nineteenth-Century Studies, and lives online. I believe that the “What is an Open Dissertation?” chapter better synthesizes some of the points I was working toward here, and the works cited section has some great references for further reading. Who knows, though? The process thoughts in the following pages might be what you need for where you are in this process. I hope that some aspect of either this proposal or my more developed project is helpful for you in your journey, and I’m hoping for good things for you.