The BP on ideology, attitudes, dissertations, and research projects...

[zalena]

The BP on ideology, attitudes, dissertations, and research projects:

http://povatdhi.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/povs-r-us/

This is exactly the smackdown I needed after this weekend's events (and my implicit attitudes towards them.)

Also: a very interesting distinction between dissertations and books.

Comments

the comment I left at his blog

[borbor-chan.livejournal.com]

A good example of a discipline where humanists (specifically, historians) are formulating many of the initiatives and then proceeding apace with "Naturwissenschaftler" is archaeology. Any team worth its spit has "hard" archaeologists, philologists, art historians, biologists, and geologists on hand and involved at various stages of the project.

Enjoyed the distinction between "dissertation" and "book" - fair to say that most academic monographs serve the purpose of the former, no? I for one am very interested in probing the stuffing and vomit bespeckling the souls of my colleagues and forebears. My ruminations on them are called "footnotes."

Re: the comment I left at his blog

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Speaking from an editorial standpoint, the extent to which monographs are books rather than dissertations seems to depend primarily on the quality of the press and the editors who help shape a rough manuscript. At R&L it was not uncommon for a book to be published with no one other than the copy editor and proofreaders having read the whole thing. At Cambridge the bar was set much higher and editors spent a great deal more time providing shape to a book. Of course, far fewer dissertations were accepted for publication. In short: we do recognize a difference and frequently turn down ms that are not up to snuff on the book side of the equation, but I would be hard pressed to define the differences aside from 'I'll know it when I see it.'