Event Title
FSM01 - Collaboration Across Countries and Disciplines: The Possible Worlds of Hybrid Dissertations
Location
NSC-148
Start Date
3-11-2017 10:00 AM
Description
Today's humanities PhDs pursue careers in many different fields - both inside and outside academia. In an effort to transform the culture of graduate education, an increasing number of humanities departments seek to design doctoral education, which can both transform the understanding of what it means to be a humanities scholar, and advance the integration of the humanities in the public sphere. This development finds its ultimate expression in calls for expanding and reimagining the form of the dissertation and how this final work can prepare humanities PhDs for a broad range of careers beyond traditional academic positions. Drawing on the process of proposing, developing and (almost) defending my own hybrid dissertation, this talk/project demo seeks to highlight the most exciting possibilities and most unexpected challenges, while also suggesting ways through which faculty and departments can best support PhD students in these endeavors. My dissertation project titled "Body, Voice and Collaboration: Re-Framing the Woman Traveler in Autobiographical Film and Filmmaking" deals with female bodies in transit and aims to undermine and complicate the current economies of representation of women travelers. It consists of two equally weighted parts: Wanderlust, a critically acclaimed feature documentary, and a theoretical-historical exploration of film aesthetics. Since I was working with an Argentinian filmmaker to produce the film, I will pay particular attention to the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration in enriching our scholarship (not only with people outside my discipline, but also from non-academic contexts). Moreover, I will address some of the obstacles I have encountered working across different cultures and languages. I will also explore the specific challenges of integrating creative works of art into humanities dissertations and suggest ways in which these can be productively framed as integral parts of one's scholarship. Finally, I will address the logistics of embarking on the path of a hybrid dissertation and the way it challenges us to revisit traditional ideas of academic labor and ideas of ownership/authorship.
FSM01 - Collaboration Across Countries and Disciplines: The Possible Worlds of Hybrid Dissertations
NSC-148
Today's humanities PhDs pursue careers in many different fields - both inside and outside academia. In an effort to transform the culture of graduate education, an increasing number of humanities departments seek to design doctoral education, which can both transform the understanding of what it means to be a humanities scholar, and advance the integration of the humanities in the public sphere.
