Omigosh, I can't believe that I'm trying to do this (dissertate)

Hello, All. I found DBC this afternoon as I cast about the internet desperately looking for examples of dissertation prospectuses. And, am I glad to find you all.

I am a PhD candidate (I defended my orals April 16) in Kent State University's Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice program, and I recently moved from my gig as a teaching fellow, and went to work at the university's Faculty Professional Development Center as a technology specialist and program developer for professional development. More importantly, I am married to a wonderful and supportive man, who is a poet teaching Creative Writing at Kent. We have three kids: a 16 year old mutt, 8 year old Boston Terrier, and 8 month old black and white cat.

I just learned of an incredible opportunity terriying prospect in my program. My program will begin awarding a new fellowship that is eligible to grads on appointment where the recipient receives a paid release from all departmental commitments for a semester plus a small research stipend. I was misinformed of the deadline, grovelled and begged to get a small extension, and was granted an extension of having all materials submitted by May 8. The problem: I need to have my dissertation proposal accepted and filed, have all IRB info filed, and some other stuff. The thing is that I only started working on my dissertation research question formally yesterday (well, as formal as scrawling some stuff on an envelope between meetings). Now, I'm scared to death, and most of my committee is out of town. The real problem is that I hadn't planned to write the prospectus until the summer break. So, I need to write the thing, and get the draft off to my chair by Friday, meet with her to discuss, revise, meet with the entire committee, revise, and then submit it (with all the signatures and IRB info) by in the next 12 days.

Am I crazy? Maybe, but there's only one other person who is eligible to apply for the fellowship this year, and next year, there'll be many, many more. I'd really like to get this done, and even if I don't win the fellowship, I'd still be ahead of the game. That's my story anyway.

My research is interested in convergences in multimodal theory and classical rhetoric, and I typically study the ways people communicate multimodally in non-academic contexts. I study research methodologies, feminist epistemologies, and composing in lifeworlds. Like that means anything. To give you an idea about my dissertation ideas, I'll transpose the text from the envelope.

My tentative title is: "What's old is new: Uniting new media and multimodal discourse with ancient rhetoric." My research question is: "What is the relationship between the communicative mode of gesture and ways of knowing (particularly embodied knowledge), and how do we express it in classical rhetorical terms?" And in no particular order, here are the very general chapters I envision where I study the ways gesture is used:

• intersections of visual rhetoric and ancient rhetoric in public places--analyzing a sign from NYC buses,
• ways that avatars are used in an online community to build ethos and identity,
• representations of women's issues in 2 contemporary graphic novels written by women
• relationship between gesture, embodied knowledge and hypertext, studying an online "cyber patient,"
• a study of civic space and invitational rhetoric in a neighborhood's gallery/park and the online site that accompanies it, and
• in the conclusion, reflections on the implications of multimodality and ways of knowing on faculty development and learning, and pedagogy.

Gees, I do sound insane. If anyone has any suggestions, comments, observations, remarks, or miscellaneous personal abuse you'd like to share, please do. I may be in need of some tough love.

Encouragement

I haven't been working too actively on my diss b/c the proposal is now in the hands of my committee. But don't worry, there's been plenty of grading to keep me busy.

I also emailed my proposal to a professor who used to be on faculty at this university. He left 2 years ago, but he generously offered to be available via email for discussions. I emailed him my proposal last weekend and he wrote back on Monday with exactly what I needed to hear:

Hi Meagan,

What a wonderful project! I can't tell you how pleased I am that youare doing this, and that you're doing it so well. I'm impressed by the sophistication of your approach, and by the rare sophistication of your understanding and handling of the concept of race...

It's so rewarding to get kudos from someone who you respect. I hope my committee receives the proposal just as favorably.

i suppose i should oblige billie as well...

cross-posted over at Wind Farm

i'm currently working on my prospectus for my diss at Temple Univ. i'm a comp/rhet/literacy studies guy, and i’m having a small issue with getting started on my prospectus. so, if i may, i'd like to briefly describe my project to see what you guys think.

I’m interested in theories/models of reconfigured classroom spaces (Dewey, Hawhee, Sirc, and even J. Rice are examples). “Reconfigured” b/c “traditional” models of classroom instruction are “unnatural” (see Dewey) and inefficient/ineffective for many students (see Hull and Schwartz, Mahiri, and Smith and Willhelm). What I’d like to do is use student-athletes as a subject site for examining how humans learn in non-traditional spaces. The theoretical framework that I plan to use includes, primarily, Vygotsky’s notions of concept formation in the development of higher mental processes, but with a twist: Lakoff and Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (Phenomenology of Perception) theories of phenomenology which articulates that concept formation in the mind is actually an embodied phenomenon. I THINK that student-athletes and coaches might be a really productive sight of inquiry and possibly serve as a sort of model for effectively reconfiguring classroom space. Now, there is a danger in holding onto this assumption before starting my research (whatever form that takes – though it’s likely to be ethnographic in “intent”); obviously I’m going to need a really good and “objective” Grand Tour Question to help in mediating this bias (which is partly formed due to a small pilot study I conducted about 2 years ago).

Now that I have provided a perfectly ambiguous summary of my dissertation dreams, I present to you my question: What ideas come to mind for a good GTQ? This is not a simple question by any means, but I don’t expect you to ruminate for hours over it – just an idea or two that pops in your head. By way of example, my committee chair suggested that I explore this topic through an examination of “motivation”: how/in what ways is a student motivated to learn? how/in what ways is a student/athlete motivated to learn? Another example is the GTQ for my pilot study: “How do you learn stuff?” Originally it was something like, “How would you describe the mind/body synthesis or lack thereof that you experience in classroom learning situations viz. athletic learning situations?” but the 17 year old boys to whom I posed this question looked at me like I was an alien when I uttered something similar to those words. Since my access to them was limited, my quick goat-thinking helped me come up with, “Uh, how bout you just start with telling me how you learn stuff.” Whatever the GTQ eventually is, I’m inclined to have it be as simple/basic as possible (yaknow, K.I.S.S. – keep it simple, stupid).

one last thing: for a long time now I’ve been thinking about how my diss would go – the methodology, the subjects, the site, the data collection and analysis, etc. The more I think about what I thought my project would be, the more I lean towards practicality. And then I think about how I’m already ready to be done with it. That last statement can be as complex or simple as you want it to be; though, what I really mean by all of it is I’m not so committed to any particular aspect that I wouldn’t consider making minor or major changes. I’ve done what might be considered a substantial amount of ground work already. So, in a nutshell, I guess what I’m aksin for is some help in shaking things up… After all, the best dissertation is a done dissertation. yaknowhatimean?

First goal

Now that comps are done with (THANK GOD!!!), my next task is to knock out this lil thing called a prospectus. Since Boot Camp is (primarily?) a place for setting goals and submitting drafts, i'll spare the details for my place. By this time next week i'd like to have completed my reading of Philosophy in the Flesh (Lakoff and Johnson's enormous follow-up work to Metaphors We Live By) and have a substantially revised draft to an article that i submitted to a journal in our field. Now, you might be thinking that focusing on an article at a time when i should be drafting my prospectus would be a distraction. The truth of the matter is, you're probably right. In some ways it probably will be/is a distraction. However, my justification is that i'm just double-dipping. The article - which is on some research i did on high school student athletes' effective ways of learning in classrooms and on bball courts - needs to have some serious beef added to the theory section. And here is how i plan on making this a useful prospectus exercise:

The theoretical framework for this article (and, at this point anyway, my diss research plans) includes Dewey and Vygotsky's notions of play, Vygotsky (and Neo-Vygotskians) theory of concept development, Bakhtin's/Dewey's/Vygotsky's social theories of dialogism, Merleau-Ponty's theory of phenomenology, and Lakoff and Johnson's elaboration of and unification of phenomenology to concept formation/development.
All of this may sound like a lot. And it is. I know this. I should note, though, that dialogism and social aspects will, for the time being, remain in the back seat - very subtle, almost implicit-like. Primarily i am concerned with concept formation and development as it relates to the body and language use. This means i'll focus mainly on Vygotsky, Merleau-Ponty and Lakoff and Johnson (with some words, possibly, about Dewey and experiential stuff).

So there it is. My first diss-related goal: establishing a theoretical framework for research on student-athletes' learning as an inquiry model for reconfiguring classroom space for 21st century learning/training.