Abstract

ot so long ago we attended a meeting of our department's graduate committee, the body that sets the policies and procedures of our large graduate program in English. The typically tedious deliberations were abruptly interrupted when a senior colleague, setting aside the matters being discussed, complained vociferously about a year-old policy on doctoral dissertations. The objectionable policy encouraged dissertation directors to counsel students to think of their dissertations as scholarly books rather than as mere academic exercises. Our colleague insisted that students should not conceive of their dissertations as books because a dissertation, he claimed, is the last important exercise that students will do in their graduate careers. This colleague, an accomplished scholar himself, argued passionately that most graduate students are not yet mature enough to contribute substantively to the types of conversations that professionals engage in, that they in effect need to prove themselves before being allowed to operate on the same plane as professionals. The perspective expressed by this colleague is far from atypical; in fact, it may well be the majority opinion of the graduate faculty in most English departments. This widespread understanding of the function and purpose of the dissertation derives from a kind of collective amnesia in the academy. As we will demonstrate, the academy has forgotten the origin of the dissertation and over the years has turned it from a substantive contribution to one's field to an instrument of evaluation. We argue that continuing to treat the dissertation in this way maintains an unequal power hierarchy of masters and initiates-one that is self-serving at best and unethical at worst. We argue further that it is incumbent upon those of us who direct dissertations to return to the practice of treating the dissertation as the first serious scholarly monograph a scholar produces. Such a practice is especially impor-