Authoring a PhD

THEE ND GAME Theoretically ambitious authors will usually put thematic or analytic keywords together before the colon, and then indicate their empirical reference and any limits on the analysis after the colon. People who see their work as more empirical or descriptive usually put a statement of what their thesis does before the colon, and then indicate the secondary analytic or theoretical themes after the colon. For example:
Sometimes the colonization effect can be achieved in other ways, for instance by posing theoretical issues in a general question first and then giving the empirical specification afterwards.
Once a word has made it into your title you had better be sure that it is genuinely important to the analysis. Readers will definitely expect to see all the title words being carefully defined,
frequently used and doing a great deal of analytic work in the main text chapters.
The bureaucracy of getting your PhD examined is always a pain, but it can be positively helpful in this particular respect.
Many universities require you to send in a form with your final thesis title and an associated abstract (of 300 words or so)
around six months ahead of when you plan to submit the final thesis. Once your title’s form of words is formally entered and approved as satisfactory it is often very hard to change. You will have to speak to this title in your oral exam (if you have one).
And you will live with having your research labelled this way on your résumé or curriculum vitae for the rest of your career.
So defining the final title is not to be done lightly or quickly.
You need to look very intensively and self-critically at your inherited ideas for describing the thesis, which usually date back to your first year of research:
◆
Does the current title really capture what you have done in your draft chapters?
Example of a
Suppressing the Diversity of the Other’:
theoretical thesis
The literary treatment of servants in
English and American novels from Jane Austen to Gone with the Wind
Example of an
The Decay of European Rule in
empirical thesis
Central Africa, 1930–58: Self-determination, democratization and race-thinking

Does it define exactly the central research question which you have answered Does it avoid drawing attention to any gaps or deficiencies in your research?
◆
Does your title’s vocabulary include the main theoretical concepts or innovations or themes that run through your research, which are used in the chapter texts and do an important job of work there Does it signal your line of argument in a reasonably substantive way Are the words used ones that you will want to talk about and explain at length, in your oral exam?
◆
Does the title make clear the empirical referents of your research, and the necessary limitations you have set for its scope and approach?
Before answering Yes, of course to all these questions, think laterally about how the thesis will really look to readers seeing it for the first time, and what your research has fundamentally achieved. Choose title words that capture these aspects in an effective way. You should also ask explicitly how your project,
your discipline and the wider intellectual world have changed since the original working title was firmed up in your first year.
Is the current title going to have the same fashionable connotations it once did Is it going to stand up in future Remember your title will bean important element of selling your work to potential university employers. Appointment committees often shortlist people for interview on the basis of quite sparse information in the papers in front of them. So during your early career years, the thesis title you choose will largely define what kind of intellectual species you are seen as.
These issues are not easy to think through on your own. It maybe hard for you to be self-critical about an inherited title that you have lived with fora longtime. But this is the last- chance saloon, so you should set aside a whole session with your supervisor to brainstorm about the full range of possible title wordings and how they might be interpreted by outside audiences. Construct an alternatives sheet containing all the feasible key terms and their combinations, paying particular attention to placing material before and after any colon in the title. Do not just look at your established title in isolation. If you compare what you already have only with a blank slate, the 0 AUTHORING AP H D