Grad Share

Episode 2: Alternative Dissertations with Anna Williams

April 29, 2022 Leah Rubinsky Season 1 Episode 2
Grad Share
Episode 2: Alternative Dissertations with Anna Williams
Show Notes Transcript

We tend to think of dissertations as being lengthy, written documents that might be hundreds of pages long. But have you ever been curious about what an alternative dissertation might be like? Join me as I speak with Anna Williams, a doctorate in English who was the first person to create and produce her dissertation in the form of a scholarly podcast. 

Support the show

Gradshare Podcast

Episode 2: Alternative Dissertations with Anna Williams

Intro: (Leah Rubinsky, LR) 

My name is Leah and you’re listening to Grad Share, a podcast that examines the challenges of graduate school. I’m a 6th year PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington.


For me, I don’t know… it has been…yeah, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve suffered a lot. (laugh) It’s been hard…really hard. It's just been an extended, not vacation, maybe purgatory? (laughs) Graduate school for me has been like an extended purgatory...(laugh)...or maybe a marathon, that’s a better metaphor…just a really, really long haul. 


And that really is the inspiration behind this podcast. I want to talk about what’s really hard about graduate school and, in particular, I want to center the experiences of graduate students. 


Alright, on to today’s episode…


One thing I’ve been struggling with as I work on my own dissertation is wanting to break away from the traditional dissertation format to something more creative, more public-facing and maybe even more accessible to broad audiences. (music)


Traditionally dissertations in English, Comparative Literature and other language or literature departments are usually these really long, written manuscripts,typically divided into lengthy chapters, all of which sustain an argument or arguments. These arguments are usually based on evidence provided by close literary analysis and then supported by theories. 


Dr. Masood Raja: Now, in the introduction you lay out your project, paragraph by paragraph you define what is it that you’re trying to do, why is it necessary, which theories will you use to unravel the text or talk about the text, who has published before you about the general topic and then then you give your discussion of the work, so the introduction usually is 25-30 pages. This is where you incorporate all the things you have read and where you will take the conversation to. And then towards the end of the introduction you give us the chapter break down: in chapter one I will discuss this, these three novels, these two theorists, here is my reason for doing that. Then in chapter two…(fade out)  


LR: This is Postcolonial scholar Dr. Masood Raja talking about how dissertations are typically crafted…(fade out) 


Dr. Masood Raja: (fade in) And then you give us a conclusion so that means…(fade out) 


LR: So, traditionally the format for a dissertation, at least in the humanities, it's usually been a written format. But is this traditional written format the only way to convey an argument? (music)


Anna Williams: I just find that so incredibly frustrating because it demonstrates to me such a profound lack of imagination. To think that a monograph is literally the only medium through which knowledge can be communicated (Leah laughs and agrees) effectively enough to prove that someone is worthy of having a PhD is just a failure. And it doesn’t reflect the world we live in because let’s be honest, how many of us go out and buy the latest academic monograph to expand our minds? That is not a format that is reaching the public.


LR: That’s Anna Williams, a PhD in English and the first person to produce a dissertation in the form of a scholarly podcast. I got the chance to talk with her about her academic journey and the development and creation of her alternative podcast dissertation. I’m excited to share that conversation with you, but before we get there, let’s talk more about alternative dissertations. 


Researcher and PhD Helen Kara says this about her own experience of wanting to write a more creative dissertation than the traditional written format.


Helen Kara: I submitted my own doctoral thesis in I think it was 2006. I really wanted to write my thesis creatively but there was no precedent at that time and my supervisors thought it was too much of a risk. So I ended up with the standard kind of brick of prose. It wasn’t badly written, my examiner said he thought it was well written, so that was kind of him. But it could have been much more engaging, I think, to read. Now though, luckily, there is lots of precedent.


LR:  Dr. Kara is right - there has been a wave of exciting alternative dissertations being produced and defended in very creative formats. Nick Sousanis, for example, a graduate of Columbia University, successfully produced and defended a dissertation in the form of a graphic novel called “Unflattening” that’s been published by Harvard University Press. Dr. Kara cites another example of an alternative dissertation, one that incorporates video and visual mediums.


Helen Kara: So, one example is Anne Harris. She studied the educational experiences of Sudanese refugee women in Australia. And she made seven short films and wrote seven chapters and the way that her thesis was experienced was one film followed by one chapter and a second film followed by a second chapter and so on. So she interspersed film and text in a creative and unusual way to give a more full and engaging experience of her doctoral dissertation.


LR: So there’s actually a lot of momentum toward supporting alternative dissertation. One alternative dissertation in particular that really caught my attention was Anna Williams’ scholarly podcast dissertation. It is incredible, it is called “My Gothic Dissertation.” Take a listen to the trailer…


Anna Williams: (Dr. Frankenstein) How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe? (Anna Williams) Welcome to “My Gothic Dissertation,” my actual dissertation on Gothic fiction and the first dissertation ever to be produced in podcast form. In it, I report on what it’s really like to be in grad school. (PhD student) “I ended up crying in the stacks of the library because it was just really designed to make me feel worthless and it worked.” (Anna Williams) And all of the ways it feels like being trapped in a 19th century Gothic novel. (Scholar on Gothic fiction) There is always darkness, there is always the threat of falling through a trap door or finding oneself in a lower level. (Anna Williams) I’m Anna Williams and as your narrator on this journey I’ll take you along on my real life quest to complete my PhD in English and escape the grad school Gothic castle for good. 


(LR) In her podcast dissertation, Anna deftly weaves together interviews, music, and narration to tell a story not just about her research into educational practices in Gothic novels, but into what we can learn from those practices about how academia functions in the present, as a hierarchical, opaque, gate-keeping space with real, material consequences for graduate students. It taught me about her work in Gothic literature and it did so in this really engaging unconventional format. I reached out to Anna sometime later and she was generous and willing to talk to me about her trajectory through graduate school, her decision to do an alternative dissertation and what she’s working on now. I’d love to share some of that conversation with you right now.


Anna Williams: My path to the academy started when I was an undergrad. I went to this really lovely liberal arts college in Birmingham, Alabama, which is where I grew up. You know, college was a really big eye-opening step for me. My own parents did not actually get a college education and for me college was a transformative, new experience and I really found a home. All of the professors there, I was seeing in them a role model for the kind of adult that I wanted to be. That really I think planted the seed of me wanting to become an English professor, which led me to the academy (fade out)


(LR) So, Anna finds herself in her PhD program, she’s getting through courses and course work but now it's time for her to go through the dreaded process of comprehensive exams. (music)


Anna Williams: You know three years into my experience of my PhD I spent 6-9 months preparing this enormous portfolio, reading this giant list of works and trying to somehow give myself this internal rolodex to be able to call up details from them - it's this huge exercise in memory. I did so much work with unclear expectations about what they were actually looking for in the work. But I really fought and clawed my way through that experience and was looking forward to the oral exam being this moment of triumph - you did it, this process was not easy because most of the time you were just trying to figure out what they wanted but you figured it out, you did it. And my experience was not like that. My oral exam felt like an exercise in being the subject of a firing squad just to see how I would react and to me, that felt so cruel, and it felt so - like, I felt betrayed, actually. And it wasn’t everyone, I should say that, but I felt betrayed by the members of my committee who were treating my oral exam like an exercise in making me uncomfortable just to see how I would handle it. And going back to the very reason why I wanted to join the academy was having these professors who were very nurturing to me and who I felt treated me very fairly and who were positive authority figures in my life. Having my comps experience be the exact opposite of that, I was basically just like if this what the academy looks like, if these are the professional practices of the workplace and this is acceptable then I want no part of this. And it was really disheartening and disillusioning and it really set me adrift. 


LR)I really resonated with Anna’s experience of her comprehensive exams because I had a similar experience. I don’t remember my comprehensive exams being a wonderfully supportive or triumphant moment. I remember feeling like I was on the defensive, I remember being sort of, what I felt was kind of attacked, not by all my committee members but it didn’t feel like an experience either of support, or encouragement. I do want to say though that I really felt supported by my committee chair, actually, during the process so that was really important to have. But Anna had this really harrowing comprehensive exam experience and she talked to me about how it really left her reeling for quite a bit of time. And it was during this time of trying to pick the pieces back up again, figuring out how to move forward, where to go from the comprehensive exams, which she passed, I didn’t mention that but she did pass them, but she was just trying to figure out ok, how, what am I going to do with my dissertation? And then she got an idea. A great one.

 

(Anna Williams): I was taking a lot of walks and listening to a lot of podcasts and that was something I had been doing for a long time to relieve my stress. One of the ones that really sparked this idea for me was Invisibilia because basically what they were doing was taking a social science lens and applying it to some real life stories and basically producing a reading of that thing that happened in real life.And I was like, this is what I do. I’m not a social scientist but I produce readings. I apply theory to texts and create insights and new ways of looking at those texts. And yeah, I fell in love with the audio medium. It is writing in a different form. 


(LR) At this point I have a question for Anna. She’s come up with this great idea, she's going to do her dissertation in the form of a podcast but was it difficult for her to convince her committee of professors that instead of doing a traditional dissertation she was going to do this new thing? Anna told me it did take some convincing to get her committee on board. But ultimately, they gave her the thumbs up. I asked Anna what she thought about those who think that a book length, written, academic dissertation is still the best way to go.


(Anna Williams): I just find that so incredibly frustrating because it demonstrates to me such a profound lack of imagination. To think that a monograph is literally the only medium through which knowledge can be communicated (Leah laughs and agrees) effectively enough to prove that someone is worthy of having a PhD is just a failure. And it doesn’t reflect the world we live in because let’s be honest, how many of us go out and buy the latest academic monograph to expand our minds? That is not a format that is reaching the public. And I think that academic work needs to have a real impact in reaching the public. 


LR: One of the really cool things that Anna was able to do as part of her dissertation podcast project was to actually record parts of comprehensive exams and her dissertation defense that she would use in her dissertation project, in her podcast project. I was curious, what was it like to record the comprehensive exams? She asked for and was given permission to record the entire comprehensive exam process, even the part where the committee asks you as the graduate student to leave the room so they can talk about you, basically, and your performance in the oral exam. 


Anna:  So, you know we go in there and the recorder is obviously set up from the get go. It is in the middle of the table. It comes time for me to leave and everyone seems to have consented that this is what is going to happen, she’s recording. I go out in the hallway and…I should jump ahead to when I actually listened to the tape. It was excruciating to listen to the entire meeting, I’ll tell you that much. I could hear my own anxiety. I was reliving my own anxiety from the meeting...but especially listening to the part where I wasn’t in the room. There were a couple of comments that I was like, ouch man. It really gets at the heart of what are these meetings? If you have things to say that you don’t feel comfortable saying to the person’s face then should you be saying it at all? And I will say that in the next meeting, my dissertation defense, as I talk about in the epilogue, I was not allowed to keep the tape rolling when I left the room. There were objections that time. I think it really does strike at the heart of, ok, what did you need to say that you didn’t want me to hear?


(LR) One of the most fascinating things about Anna’s dissertation is the way that it works on multiple levels. So, in one way it is about the Gothic novel and her exploration of that. But on another level it is also about her own experience getting a doctoral degree and moving through graduate school, the challenges, the ways in which graduate school was very disillusioning for her. It is also about an interrogation of how knowledge and power works in the academy. And that part I find so important and so fascinating. There is a big role that recording plays in exposing these places in academia that often are opaque and don’t invite people to go in and see how things work. These are ways of trying to expose how things work in the academy and I think that is so important. One question I had for Anna was about the podcast medium itself. Obviously this is a form that I’m really interested in. How did it work to mobilize the podcast format and in what ways did it enhance the communication of the argument she was trying to make in her dissertation? 


(Anna Williams): With my medium, the podcast medium maybe that allowed for a broader array of voices to speak with authority on their experiences because that’s what we have come to expect from the podcast medium. It's very intimate and we are used to hearing people’s personal stories in that setting. You know one thing that, besides layering the voices, I will say, is something that has a profound effect on the argument that I’m making, is being able to bring in things like music and sound. So beyond just layering voices, layering music, sounds, that also is something that you absolutely cannot do on the page and that is a skill that is useful and applicable and that has a profound effect. Honestly scoring “My Gothic Dissertation” was one of my favourite parts of making it and by scoring I mean adding the music, and beyond just picking out the music to go underneath certain parts, actually weaving it together with my narration so, you know, I’ll say something and then I put in a pause, I edit in a pause and let the music rise because there is a phrase in the music that adds a different layer of meaning or shade of meaning to what I just said. If it wasn’t there it wouldn’t have the same effect. If people are skeptical of the podcast as a vehicle for making meaning or conveying knowledge I think that, this is one of my key points of evidence is actually this different medium that is not a monograph actually provides more avenues for creating meaning that are much richer and that are nonverbal and that connect in multimodal ways with the person receiving the argument. 


LR: Well, after so much hard work, Anna finally goes through her dissertation defense process of this incredible podcast dissertation that she worked so hard to produce and create. And I don’t think I’m giving any spoilers away when I say she passes. And of course she does, her dissertation is brilliant, I highly recommend you listen to it. You can access this podcast dissertation on mygothicdissertation.com, which is a beautiful website she’s created to host the podcast, it's got gorgeous cover art. But you can also find it wherever you listen to your podcasts. It's brilliant. It's amazing. And of course my next question for Anna was: what happened afterwards? What about the job market? Here is what she had to say about that.


Anna Williams: There are so many job applications that I sent out where I just never heard a fucking word afterward. It just asks so much for so little in return. Because you spend months creating these materials and then you tailor them expertly to every job ad and every institution that you’re applying for and that takes so much time. And in the process you convince yourself, you know what this is the perfect job for me, I can see the rest of my life playing out here. I might as well just start looking for…what are real estate prices like in this city where this college is. You’re lucky if you even get an email that says, ‘we’ve gone with another candidate.’ It just treated the job applicant so poorly. I was like, this is another moment where I feel really disillusioned with this profession and I want nothing to do with it. 


LR: So, knowing that she does not want to work in academic institutions as a professor, how does Anna make the transition to looking for jobs outside of academia?


Anna Williams: What I’m finding out here pursuing this other thing is that I feel like I’m fighting an uphill battle convincing people in industry that a PhD is a worthwhile endeavor to prepare me for those jobs too. It's been an uphill battle trying to carve a space for myself in the audio industry because there’s just not a clear…I think there needs to be a whole lot more work done by the academic communities to make the case to other industries that you should really be hiring our graduates, and not just at the undergraduate level but all the way up to the PhD. 


LR: I really appreciated Anna’s honesty with me in some of the difficulties she experienced in her transition from an academic career to a career in the audio industry. And although it's been a struggle I just think she’s such a talented, creative storyteller with the podcast medium and the audio format. I wish her so much success and I look forward to anything she works on and produces. I think she’s on the right career track. I wanted to leave you with some parting advice Anna gave me for other PhDs who might be interested in also doing something other than following the academic career track.


Anna Williams: Really start thinking early in your PhD experience about what kind of career you want and start laying a foundation early. Get internships or whatever you can. Start networking. That’s a huge piece of advice. I feel like networking is a little bit of a dirty word sometimes in academic spaces sometimes because it can be coded for ‘give me unfair advantage.’ Because when I think of networking in academic spaces I think of grad students going to conferences and trying to get introduced to influential professors in their fields. I’ve learned that networking is not necessarily like that out in the professional world outside of academia. It is really a lot more: let me learn from you. Let me introduce myself to you and maybe you’ll hear of something some time down the line that makes you think of me and you’ll reach back out. So networking is very important and you should start doing it before you leave your PhD in the industry you are interested in. 


(LR) We’ve come to the end of our episode. I just want to express my gratitude for Anna Williams. Again, if you haven’t listened to her podcast dissertation you really should. You can find it at mygothicdissertation.com. I’m also really grateful to the musicians for their creative commons licenses whose music I use in these episodes and who are credited on the transcript. Where can you find the transcript for this episode? You can check it out at gradshare@buzzsprout.com. And finally: reach out to me. Do you have comments, ideas or questions? Email me at gradsharepodcast@gmail.com Ok see you next time!


Music:


“End of the Road” by Anthem of Rain CCBY

“Humbug” Crowander CCBY

“Reverie (small theme) -Ghost CCBY