"The Writing of This Thesis Was a Process that I Could Not Explore with the Positivistic Detachment of the Classical Sociologist": Self and Structure in "New Humanities" Research Theses

• Published in: Journal of English for academic purposes Vol. 5; no. 3; pp. 222 - 243
• Main Authors: Starfield, Sue, Ravelli, Louise J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 01.07.2006
• Subjects: Academic Discourse; Australia; Discourse Analysis; Doctoral Dissertations; Foreign Countries; History; Humanities; Intellectual Disciplines; Social Sciences; Teaching Methods; Universities; Writing (Composition); Australia
• ISSN: 1475-1585
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2006.07.004

To what extent have postmodernism and research modalities which fundamentally question the notion of the objective researcher impacted on the production of Ph.D. theses in the humanities and social sciences? This paper examines the visual and verbal representations of the writerly self through the title pages, tables of contents and introductory chapters of a corpus of 20 recent Ph.D. theses in History and Sociology from an Australian university. While affirming the dominance of the topic-based thesis macrostructure in the social sciences and humanities, it subjects the "topic-based" thesis category to greater scrutiny, presenting a case for the emergence of a "New Humanities" Ph.D., marked by its construction of a "reflexive self," unable to write with the "classic detachment" of positivism. The paper briefly considers the implications for disciplinarity and postgraduate pedagogy. (Contains 9 figures and 5 tables.)