Hi, this is Laura Turner and today we're going
to talk about how to choose your topic for
your dissertation. When I graduated with my
BA in English, as a part of my honors requirement
I had to write a dissertation, sixty-eight
page honors paper. And I had to figure out
pretty quickly what I wanted to write about
and how I was going to go about doing this
huge paper. So very much like a dissertation.
And also of course I wrote a play for my thesis
in graduate school, so I do know a little
bit about picking a topic. What you want to
do is you don't want to - what you want to
do is try to pick something that will not
sort of nail you into a corner. Pick something
that's broad enough for you to change later.
Do not get married to your topic, first off,
because it's probably going to change as you
collect more research and figure out what
you want to do. For example, my honors paper
was on Shakespeare's villains, and Shakespeare
has many villains, and so as I was writing
it, I had to actually pare it down, and figure
out which villains I was going to write about.
Even in a sixty-eight page paper, you have
to figure out specifically what narrow topics
you're going to write about. So pick something
that is broad, but not too broad, and something
that you are very interested in, that you
can work on for a year at least, or more,
depending on when you have to pick your dissertation
topic. Also look at the research that you're
coming across, if you're seeing that you're
something similar to your dissertation or
your actual dissertation has been written
about many different times, consider tweaking
it to make it more specific. Try to make it
your own. Try to make it feel as though you
are writing something new. Try to discover
something new with your dissertation topic.
And of course, as I said before, pick something
you are more interested in, because you're
going to be working on this for a long time.
And keep your head.
