Paging academic types - urgent help required

[brixtonbrood]

My mother is having a major crisis of confidence half way through her OU MA in Classical Greek Drama (I forget the exact title).

She really really needs to read some MA theses to get a sense of what's involved in the next stage and to pick a topic for her own thesis of the appropriate breadth.

Where can I lay my hands on some good examples (ideally good but not insanely brilliant)? In Classics for preference but Eng Lit (not sf) or English History would also be OK (or at a pinch French Lit or Art History - it just needs to be roughly within her sphere of knowledge).

Comments

Re: How about...

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the suggestions, but what she really needs is to read some finished MA theses to get a feel for the level and depth/breadth involved.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Basically she needs to go to a university library, and see if she can get permission to look at a few examples. This may not be terribly easy - most tend to be kept in closed stores rather than open shelving, and if she isn't a member of the university concerned, she may not get as much cooperation as she needs. I'm not even sure that all universities keep their M.A. theses (as opposed to the Ph.D.'s), or make them available. University of Kent at Canterbury seems to, but doesn't have anything in Classics. Ideally, she should get herself to her own institution's library, but that, of course, is in Milton Keynes. And I can't tell from the library catalogue if they store M.A. theses or not.

You might be able order theses through inter-library loan, but that requires knowing what precise volume you want to look at, and isn't really suitable for what she wants.

Bottom line - she needs to talk to her tutor, and possibly the Regional Centre as well.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Many thanks.

A browse through the Internet led me to the preliminary conclusion that this was an unexpectedly tricky problem, but I was hoping for there to be an easier solution known to actual academics - apparently not. I might suggest she looks for some Victorian Eng Lit MAs or similar in Canterbury. Tutor this year appears to be a bit useless (or at least not sympa), but she'll have to ask him as well - I certainly don't see how she can pick a practicable thesis topic (or indeed decide whether she wants to do the last year of her MA at all) without seeing some examples.

Try looking at...

[pureofthought.livejournal.com]

http://www.inform25.ac.uk/AET/ - this tells you about cross-institution agreements for academic libraries in the M25 consortium, which includes both the OU and Canterbury. (The OU is listed under T for The: I wrote this piece of software, and it's supposed to let the data entry people decide on a sort name as well as a display name, but librarians often seem to have problems with elementary alphabeticisation.) It should tell you what you need to turn up with to prove appropriate levels of membership of a home institution, and should tell you where to go for help. It's well worth contacting the library by phone or email in advance with the specific query about MA theses, to prevent a wasted journey.

Another solution is to see if she can get in touch with someone (through her tutor, or through some of the student groups on the OU's First Class system) who did a similar MA last year. Asking a question about choosing a topic on First Class is likely to get loads of answers, some of which might even be helpful.

ou library ?

[smallbeasts.livejournal.com]

It says you can borrow thesis here:

http://library.open.ac.uk/services/getting_books.html

Or try a more senior tutor if the first one is being useless - it really is there job to help out with this sort of stuff.

- Jo

it's structural mechanics

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

De-lurking in response to cries of academic distress.

She's in Canterbury, then? She should have no trouble going to the university library and reading theses in the library. If she wants to make it over to Oxford she can come browse the Bod.

Theses aren't always impossible to sort out. Having advised on a bunch of 'em, I'd say she needs to:

review her interests in classical Greek drama (why did she choose it in the first place is a great way to recharge her batteries on this one) and come up with, say, two or three questions or points of view about which she might wish to argue.

For each of those possibilities, review her own collection of notes and The Literature and see if anyone else has either information or points of view she'd want to adopt or contend with.

See if her own contentions, supporting evidence, and counter-evidence can be roughly organised along the famous Tripartite Divisions of Everything, and if those divisions lead her to support or rebut her original propositions or analyses. (The trick here is that if she wants to end up saying "X is True" then she starts by saying "X is not True" and then showing why the statement "X is true" is false.)

All theses founder and/or become insupportable when the author (a) ignores the blessed utility of structure, structure, structure or (b) chooses a topic that in fact they hate or which actually bores them. Or both (a) and (b) together.

Always write the Introduction last.

Write from the middle, if necessary, but write, and label everything clearly: "Draft Middle of ?Chapter Three" is honest and useful when it comes to assembling the final product.

No sermon should last more than 8 minutes. Use the word count to your own advantage. If it takes more than the allowed word count, even after omitting needless words, then simplify the argument, and use the other material in an article.