PA 8360 section 501

Dissertation Workshop.
Murray J. Leaf U T Dallas
Office: Gr 3.128 Time TBArraged.
Tel: 972 883-2732 Place TBA.
mjleaf@utdallas.edu Spring 06

We will meet the first week of class to decide our schedule, either Thursday morning or sometime Friday,
depending on student schedules. My time is flexible.

During the semester we will meet about eight times, with most of the meetings at the beginning and at the
end and a work period in the middle. As a workshop, our purpose is the work. Each of you should be
working on your dissertation. The idea of getting together periodically is to exchange experiences and
information that may be of mutual help, and to assist in the imposition of the kind of discipline that writing
an extended study requires. Since I find that most students have most trouble deciding what their "data" is
and arranging it so that it tells them things they want to know, this is what I usually concentrate on.

From time to time I may suggest readings, but will try to minimize this because you should be doing the
reading you need for the dissertation. However, every scholar should have certain basic reference works.
The most important is Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and
Dissertations. There are many editions. It is silly not to own one. The importance of Turabian is not only
that she is the standard, it is also that she covers a huge range of types of materials—newspapers, court
cases, unpublished papers, and so on in addition to the more commonly encountered sources. So by
following her you can plan ahead and avoid finding that you need to reorganize your entire bibliography
half or two thirds of the way through your writing.

You also should have a good dictionary better than the Webster’s New Collegiate, and one of the Fowler’s
guides to English usage (American or British—the British is more fun but less relevant).

Other useful sources (suggested by Simon Fass) are:

Lawrence F. Locke, Waneen Spirduso, Stephen J. Silverman. 2000. Proposals that work: a guide for
planning dissertations and grant proposals 4th ed. [eBook]. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage.

James Mauch and Namgi Park. 2003. Guide to the Successful Thesis and Dissertation: A Handbook for
Students and Faculty: Books in Library and Information Science, V. 62. [eBook]. New York: Marcel
Dekker Inc.

Arlene Fink. 1998. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From Paper to the Internet. [eBook]
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.

I also think you should look in the library for writings by the UTD faculty—know who you are dealing
with. Also, if you find something you would like to be able to do, you can ask the author in person.