Dissertation
Advancement to candidacy for the Ph.D. requires both passing the Qualifying Examination and filing the dissertation proposal. Click here to view the Writing Benchmarks for Dissertating Students.
Initial Steps
The Dissertation Committee
At the proposal stage, only the director and two additional readers need be selected. All committee members must be members of the English Graduate Faculty, which can include faculty from other Rutgers University departments. The graduate office must be informed at this time about the composition of the dissertation committee. Students should consult with each member of their committee and agree upon a schedule for submitting drafts of chapters. Please note that there is no technical limit on the number of members a committee can have; once the three EGF members are in place, additional members, including those from other universities, may be included in the committee with the approval of the dissertation director. Students should consult with each member of their committee and agree upon a schedule for submitting drafts of chapters.
The outside reader, whether from another department within the university or from outside the university, can be chosen when the dissertation is under way. After an outside reader has agreed to serve, the student should notify the Graduate Office, who will inform the Graduate School. The degree to which outside readers are involved in the chapter-by-chapter progress of the dissertation varies. They may be as involved as the department readers, but sometimes they are in a position to read only the final dissertation.
The Dissertation Proposal
The dissertation proposal is an initial and exploratory attempt to formulate the dissertation project. It should identify a problem or issue that previous scholarship has overlooked or treated inadequately and it should set out a program of research that is likely to lead to an original and illuminating treatment of the question it addresses. The proposal should not attempt to be that treatment, or even a summary of it; its function is to raise the issue and sketch an approach to it. It should address any major publications that have dealt with the same issue in order to indicate what remains to be done, and set out the various stages of the work that lie ahead. The proposal is just that: a set of suggestions that will inevitably prove inadequate once the real work begins. What is required is sufficient evidence that there is a real question, or set of questions, being asked – questions of the kind that are appropriate to a dissertation and thus neither too narrow nor too ambitious.
Timing and Procedure
Dissertation Workshop
Defense of Dissertation
In addition, the student must make arrangements to meet with the Graduate School’s administrator prior to their defense to ensure the following: that the dissertation style conforms to the Graduate School’s requirements, which are set out in a booklet available from the Graduate Office, and to receive the paperwork necessary for filing of the dissertation and of the diploma application.
The defense consists of a one-hour meeting of the committee with the student. Upon completion of the defense, the student must submit one electronic copy of the dissertation to the Graduate School.