Watch video of the session here.
Scholarly communication practices are changing rapidly as researchers present their work in new ways and through new channels. Some of the most innovative work is being done by emerging scholars who are blazing new trails with their dissertations. The challenges now are to develop new systems to support this rigorous work, and to provide models to graduate students who hope to create projects that go beyond traditional text-base dissertations.
This panel features a number of scholars who have successfully completed or are completing innovative dissertations with non-textual components. It is a follow-up to and expansion of the highly successful “What Is a Dissertation: New Models, Methods, Media” Forum (#remixthediss) held at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on October 10, 2014 and at over 20 satellite locations around the world, and co-sponsored by the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center and HASTAC@Duke and HASTAC@CUNY.
Our panel will use as a jumping off place a series of questions generated with the virtual and f2f audience of “What Is a Dissertation?” and shared on a public Google Doc (http://bit.ly/remixthediss-questions). The HASTAC 2015 Conference Panel will address:
-What form(s) can/do these new dissertations take?
-How did panelists assess and decided to take the risks and then successfully navigate institutional roadblocks that arose?
-Who mentored, supported, or was willing to change the rules to make the new dissertation possible?
-What became possible by expanding our ways of working and why did we choose such forms?
-What was possible with this form of dissertation that would not have been possible with a conventional humanities or social science text-based dissertation?
-How did changing the product (the form of the dissertation) change the process of writing it, of thinking through one’s graduate career and one’s future choices?
-How are these new dissertations assessed and evaluated by committees? by search committees? by the academy in general? What are some examples for new assessment models?
-How can we change the dissertation defense to match these new forms?
-How will these digital works be archived and sustained?
-What effect do current dissertation archiving services (e.g., ProQuest, ETD, etc.) have on these new types of dissertations?
-How did panelists navigate Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) when crafting their dissertations?
