Dissertation Writing Tips: Organizing Your Dissertation Chapters

hi everyone uh welcome to uh the ideas on fire webinar on organizing your dissertation this is a webinar just for those of you enrolled in the grad school rockstar program or dissertation rockstar boot camp so welcome thanks for joining us and i hope you find this useful in figuring out for those of you who are just starting on your dissertation it will hopefully help you figure out how to start and for those of you who are are deep in the throes of writing different chapters hopefully it will help you figure out um where to go next and how to wrap things up as you as you finished up chapters and as you can shop the dissertation itself um as you know i'm kathy hannaback i'm president of ideas on fire um i've talked with a lot of you in our private slack community and i'm excited that you're here so i'm going to share the slides hopefully maybe if this works the way it's supposed to um okay so that should come up and we're going to go full screen very nice okay i'm going to put my video down so you can read the slides better so it's bigger font and then i'll put my video back up at the end of the webinar in the meantime if you have questions um as i'm going through things you can put them in the chat box on the right-hand side of the screen and i'll be sure to get to them at the end in the q a so let's make my video go down there we go okay so let's start off thinking about the types of organization that we're talking about when you're writing a dissertation so i'm going to be focusing on two kind of levels or types of organization the big picture organization we might think of that as the forest level that's the level of the dissertation itself the entire thing as an object so that will involve things like the order of particular chapters does chap does this chapter need to be chapter one does this chapter need to be chapter four etc as well as the order of writing so how to decide which chapter to write first or which chapter to write next i'm also going to be talking about small picture organization so what goes in each individual chapter and we can think of these kinds of questions as small picture organization as in this you know tree metaphor um as the trees the branches and the leaves themselves that together comprise the big picture forest of your dissertation okay so i'm going to start off talking a little bit about patterns so one of the ways that a lot of students find useful to start working into their dissertation is to start looking at the actual archival objects or the case studies they're looking at so depending on your field you might call these things something different if you're in anthropology or sociology these would include things like your interviews your your ethnographic texts and quotes if you're working in literary studies these might be books these might be novels these might be plays these might be texts of various sorts if you're in interdisciplinary programs like cultural studies or women's studies or african american studies this might be a mixture of all kinds of different objects you might have some films you might have some television episodes you might have some youtube videos you might have some advertisements you might have some novels you might have some pieces of legislation or speeches from people you might have a mixture of different kinds of objects whatever your field calls these things i'm going to be calling them archival objects if that word kind of throws you off the archive element of it just swap out whatever term you use to describe the things that you're actually making claims about in your dissertation so to get started i want you to look at the actual archival objects or case studies that you have pick some of those and start writing about them this can take the form of free writing this can take the form of notes this can take the form of little blurbs of analysis or little kind of notes to yourself about what a particular element in that archival object or case study or ethnographic interview entails and this doesn't have to be formal writing it will cohere later perhaps into formal writing but don't focus on that when you're just getting started forget about argument at this point forget about what it all adds up to or what it all means you're focusing on individual texts individual archival objects as a way into what will become your dissertation project or for those of you who are already in your dissertation project this is sometimes a useful way to start making some sense amongst the noise so start small start with the actual texts and figure out what you have to say about them first once you've compiled some writing about your different archival objects you're going to start coding those pieces of writing again depending on your field the term coding might be a relevant one for you in other fields it might be a term that might be more useful is looking for patterns the goal with this with this step is that you're trying to find the themes and the thumb sub themes which is a hardware to say some themes um that you find across your archival objects or case studies this is a chance for you to group like objects together so for instance let's say you're looking at a film you're looking at an episode of a television show and you're looking at a piece of immigration law right let's say these are three of your archival objects that you think you want to talk about somewhere in your dissertation you'll probably have more objects than that but for the sake of an example we're going to pick three you've written some notes about them you've jotted down what you find interesting about them what you might want to say about them you're going to start looking for themes across the different archival objects that you've gathered maybe you start to notice for example that this piece of legislation that that film that that television show and that interview you did with that artist all seem to cohere around the theme of agency or they all seem to cohere around the theme of immigration law or they all seem to cohere around the theme of feminism whatever it is depending on the topic that you're writing about right but you're going to find those patterns across the different objects that you're looking at you're going to notice that some objects have themes that no other objects do right so those are objects that don't seem to fit with the other objects in your um in your toolbelt in your in your tool case we're going to set those aside for the moment those objects those archival objects those case studies those interviews whatever it is that you're talking about those texts they might wind up in a later chapter they might wind up in a different article they might wind up in your next book but if they don't have any connecting pattern that links them to any of the other objects that you're talking about i want you to set those aside for the moment so once you've coded your notes or coded your your kind of themes that you found across your archival objects you're going to start grouping those together so maybe one theme to go back to my previous example is feminism maybe another theme is immigration law maybe another theme is history right and your themes might be more specific than this they might be you know immigration law in the 1920s in the united states for example um but whatever they are start grouping those objects together under those themes so you have a pile virtual or physical of objects that have something to say about feminism you have a pile of objects that have something to say about immigration law you have a pile of objects that have something to say about history right those themes are going to be your chapters you're going to further hone those themes you're going to make them more specific right feminism is a way to giant uh a category to be an entire chapter to be a single chapter right um but you get the idea those themes are going to become the backbone of your single chapters sub themes are going to go within that those chapters right so let's say for example you have your pile of objects that have something to do with feminism you have some films in there you have some interviews in there you have some speeches in there you have um maybe some television shows pieces of legislation etc right now you're going to find some things within those objects so maybe some of those objects talk about different definitions of feminism or different cultural moments in feminist discourse or shifts within particular kinds of feminist activism those sub themes are going to comprise the sections of an individual chapter right so the point here is you're looking for patterns once you have those piles those of those themes those chapters you're going to start looking at how those chapters and themes need to go together to create a logical flow across the dissertation as a whole so for instance which chapter needs to come first so that readers already understand have already been introduced to something and understand something so that when they get to the next chapter they can apply that concept to a different example right what's the logical order that you need to present these themes such that a reader can follow your argument and your thought process across the entire dissertation you're also going to think about what links all of those themes all of those chapters together what do you want to say about that pattern that thing that you want to say that's your dissertation's argument it's not the theme itself is not an argument right a topic or a theme is not an argument they're organizing criteria to decide what goes in what chapter but it's not an argument in and of itself feminism it as a term is not an argument right what do you have to say about how these specific objects engage with the topic of feminism that's your argument right so then you're going to think about how the chapters themselves need to be organized across the dissertation so that a reader can follow your dissertation's argument across those individual chapters now there's a couple of different ways that you can order the chapters across your dissertation and this will be largely determined by your discipline as well as the individual objects and topics that you're engaging one easy way to organize chapters across the dissertation is historically or chronologically right earlier events come in earlier chapters later events come in later chapters so your chapter one might start in might cover a time period say 1900 to 1920 the middle two chapters might engage the decades of 1920 to 1970 and the latter part of the dissertation the latter chapters might engage post-1970 stuff right so historically or chronologically this is extremely easy for readers to understand when they're reading your dissertation as a whole we're used to to reading linearly right even if you're making a complicated argument about time you're problematizing the kind of progress narratives and tediologies and violence is inherent in that way of telling time structurally it's still enormously helpful to prevent things chronologically so that your reader understands the more complicated argument that you're engaging another way to organize your chapters across the dissertation as a whole is by complexity so you might start off with less complex themes or easier to grasp themes and have those followed by more complex ones again think about your reader here right if you jump right in after your introductory chapter if your first chapter of your dissertation is the hardest for a reader to understand you're not doing them any favors and you're not doing yourself any favors because presumably you want them to be able to follow your point that is why they are reading your dissertation right so if you organize your chapters from less complex to more complex you help your reader build understanding across the manuscript as a whole now when i say less complex themes or chapters that doesn't mean that there were chapters and it doesn't mean that they engage any less of your intelligence right they're not dumber chapters in that sense it's just that the concepts that they introduce and that you're asking a reader to comprehend are not as complex as the ones that you present later in the text you give you give your reader a chance to build and to to kind of compile the different ideas and concepts that you introduce across the text itself another way of organizing chapters across the dissertation so which chapter comes first which chapter comes next etc is by using simultaneous timelines now this only works for certain dissertation topics for those of you who have more historical dissertation topics this might not be the best use of it but for those of you who are organizing dissertations that are more thematic this might be a useful strategy so in this concept in simultaneous timelines you would have say for instance chapter one covering the same historical period as all the other chapters so you have chapter 1 cover say 1900-1920 chapter 2 covers 1900 to 1920. chapter 3 covers 1900 to 1920. what differentiates them is not the historical period but the theme so in this example for let's say chapter 1 which covers 1900 to 1920 you're talking about the theme of feminism in that historical moment it with relationship to whatever objects you're engaging chapter two covers that same historical period but instead talking about feminism in relationship to those objects you talk about some other theme right you also have the option of instead of keeping the objects the same you switch and have a different set of objects and the same theme again this is going to depend on your discipline and the actual objects you're talking about but this is one way to organize chapters across a dissertation that aren't necessarily chronological right another way to organize chapters across a dissertation is thematic and for those of you writing um particularly interdisciplinary dissertations this might be a good place to start thinking to start thinking about so in this case chapter one might introduce a concept that's needed to later understand chapter two chapter three would introduce a theme that's later needed to understand chapter four this is a way of providing the information your reader needs to follow your argument across the chapters and across the dissertation as a whole so what about organization within chapters themselves right i want you to go back to how to coding your archival objects when you're thinking about this so once you've created your your chapters you know roughly what archival objects are going in what chapter which interviews go here which novels go there which television shows you're going to talk about in that chapter what films you're going to talk about in that chapter what interviews or case studies you're going to talk about in that chapter etc and this can be rough this can change over the course of a dissertation you might find that that novel that you originally were going to discuss in chapter one actually fits better with the other text in chapter three that's perfectly fine but when you're looking within a single chapter you're essentially going to look at organization the same way that you did when you're looking at organization of the chapters as wholes so within a single chapter look at the archival objects that you're analyzing within that chapter what order do those objects need to go in to create a logical flow within the chapter itself what links all of those objects together what do you want to say about those links that is your chapter argument your chapter argument is different than your dissertation argument however your chapter argument should be a sub claim of your dissertation argument if your dissertation think of your dissertation argument as a big umbrella right everything that's in your dissertation should somehow help prove your dissertation's argument if it doesn't help prove that it shouldn't be in the manuscript leave it for a different article leave it for a conference presentation leave it for your next book right but everything in the dissertation supports the dissertations arguments the chapter arguments are sub-claims of that dissertation argument right your chapter arguments are more specific they engage with specific texts to support that larger dissertation argument so then how do you organize the actual sections within a single chapter you do that essentially the same way that you organize the chapters themselves across your dissertation so for example you might organize sections historically or chronologically so within the single chapter after you have your introduction to that chapter where you lay out your argument and you explain to your readers what you're going to do in that chapter you present those examples or those archival objects in historical or chronological order earlier events that are followed by later events particularly within single chapters historical and chronological order is the most easiest for readers to follow there are very rare exceptions where that's not going to be a useful structure and there are exceptions so definitely think about your discipline and your objects and the argument you're trying to build but within a single chapter it gets super complicated if you're presenting events out of historical order because it gets super unclear when you're referring to things again think about your reader here right if you start talking about an event that happens in 1920 that's your first section of this chapter but then the next chapter jumps back in time to 1880. you have to do a lot of work to explain to your reader why you're doing that why did you start with the later date why didn't you just start with the earlier one right so and there are rare cases where that might make more sense but they're rare for a reason right so within a single chapter oftentimes historical chronological order of events at least is going to be easiest for a reader to understand and again you want your readers to focus on your argument not the date of something so if they are distracted by dates jumping all over the place they're not going to be able to focus on your argument to the degree that that you want them to right so help your readers out present information in the easiest form in the easiest order so that they can focus on what you actually want them to focus on which is your argument right okay what about conclusions so so far i've been talking about body chapters of your dissertation right so that chapter one chapter two chapter three chapter four chapter five depending on how many chapters you have that might go up from there hopefully not too much from there dissertation can get really long i've also been talking about sections within your chapter right so those body sections within your chapters but we're also talking about in this webinar introductions and conclusions both introductory chapters to your dissertation and conclusion chapters in your dissertation as well as introductory and conclusion sections within each chapter right introductions and conclusions are bookends they're the frame for your entire dissertation they're also the frame for each individual chapter they're the they're the structure in which you sh tell your reader what to focus on right i recommend personally writing the body chapters and the body sections first this is because oftentimes you have to write an entire chapter to figure out what it's about you have to write an entire dissertation to figure out what it's about your introduction which i'll talk about in a minute is where you explain that and so if you have to write the whole thing to get there there's no real point in writing your introduction first because you don't yet know what it's going to say so i recommend starting with the body chapters and the body sections followed by conclusions and then go back and write the introductions so if you've written your or have started to to map out your body chapters and your body's sections within each chapter then then what comes with the conclusion conclusions both as a concluding chapter of your dissertation as well as a concluding section within each chapter are often easiest to write after you've finished the body chapters and body sections that's because the ideas and the kind of the the big picture of it is fresh in your mind in your conclusion you're going to be answering what do all those body chapters or sections add up to what's the big point what's the so what right what further questions do you have what things didn't you get to in those body chapters or those body sections right and most importantly for chapter conclusions so these are the concluding sections within a chapter how does that chapter and the next chapter illustrate your dissertation's overarching argument these concluding sections is how you draw that narrative arc across the dissertation as a whole so your conclusion to chapter one for example the concluding section in chapter one should link the topic of chapter one to the topic of chapter two right it smooths over that transition but it should also link both of those chapters to the dissertation's overarching argument so how do the examples from chapter one that you've already discussed and analyzed so brilliantly as well as the examples from chapter two that you're teasing your reader i'm gonna talk about in just one minute on the next page how do all of those together help support your dissertation's overarching argument that's what you put in the concluding section of each chapter so how about introductions right if you've gotten through your body chapters or you've begun to map them out at least as well as the body sections of each chapter you've figured out what goes in the concluding chapter as well as the concluding section for each chapter how about the introductions as i said i always recommend that people write these last you might find that you like to write them first in which case you know go forth everybody writes differently that's perfectly fine if it works for you do it but i've found that most people it doesn't work for you might be the exception in which case rock on but as i said oftentimes you have to write the thing to figure out what you have to say about it and because what you have to say about it is what an introduction is it makes sense that you would write that last so your introductory chapter as well as the introductory section within each chapter needs to state your argument right up front it should state it clearly should state it boldly and it should state it simply so in this let's break this down a little bit so clearly right clarity is often something that most writers struggle with that's perfectly fine it's rare to get a super clear statement of an argument and a first draft that never happens because you are still figuring it out and you're figuring out what language makes it the most clear to communicate right so when you're talking about stating your argument clearly we're talking about using language that's easy to understand that gets out of your own way so that your readers aren't tripping over the words but instead focusing on the content right and that is up front about what you're saying that doesn't bury your claim within a lot of prepositional clauses within a lot of passive voice and within a lot of jargon clearly state your argument also boldly state your argument this is something that almost all graduate students are in the process of learning how to do that's perfectly fine when i talk about boldly stating your argument i mean getting rid of the defensiveness that we often learn to write through when we're students so part of what you're doing when you're writing a dissertation is you're learning how to inhabit a colleague voice a scholar voice and ditch a student voice right you're not expected to magically know how to do this you've been a student so far that's the point that's good right but part of what a dissertation teaches you to do the process is designed to teach you to do is to ditch the student voice and inhabit a scholar voice scholars don't need to defend why they're saying things they need to explain what they're saying for sure and provide support and evidence to back up those claims but when i say you don't need to defend your right to say something i mean you don't need to defend why you get to say something on this topic you get to say something on this topic because you're writing a dissertation that in and of itself is your defense that in and of itself is your justification right you're an expert on this topic otherwise you wouldn't be writing a dissertation on it so when i say boldly state your claim i'm talking about be confident and inhabit a voice of confidence when you state your conclusion or your argument for a particular chapter or the dissertation as a whole right you don't need permission you've already been granted permission to speak on this topic just state your claim and when i and also state your claims simply right this isn't when you're stating your argument both in the introduction chapter as well as the introductory section of each chapter you're not providing all the details yet right that's what happens in your analysis that's what happens in the subsequent chapters or that's what happens through your critical uh your critical analysis of particular case studies or examples right so state your argument clearly boldly and simply in your introductions you're gonna also in your introductions both your introductory chapter as well as your introductory sections for each chapter you're going to name your archival objects or your case studies your examples and you're also going to say how they demonstrate your chapter argument as well as your overarching dissertation argument so within a single chapter for example in the introductory section of chapter one you're going to state your argument in this chapter i argue blah blah blah blah through an analysis of xyz archival objects right and these archival objects my claims about these archival objects support this chapter argument in xyz way you're not going to phrase it quite so inelegantly but you get the idea you're also going to link that chapter argument and your archival objects your case studies your examples your texts to the overarching dissertation argument that's what we that's what uh uh faculty mean when they talk to you about sign posting you're telling your reader what you're gonna be doing across the chapter or the dissertation as a whole you're also telling them how it all connects what's the big picture what does all this stuff have to do with each other right that's what an introduction does it's that big picture what does it all mean kind of explanation that big picture what does it all mean thing is often really difficult to find right but it's also something that you usually find through writing the thing itself and that's why i recommend winning introductions last because you might not yet know how it all connects and that's perfectly fine you'll figure it out through writing it and that's what goes in the introduction okay so then where to begin let's say for those of you who let's say you're just starting your dissertation or maybe you're looking at your dissertation proposal if you haven't even started the project itself one way to start one way i often recommend starting is to start with the objects as i spoke about earlier right so start with your individual archival objects your case studies your interviews whatever text it is that you're making claims about start with them right into them find your themes figure out how they connect figure out what order they need to go in to make logical sense i also often recommend to students to pick a single chapter to start with it's often tempting particularly if you're at the very very beginning stages and you're just um you're just getting going you have all these ideas you have all these objects you have all these these examples and it's very tempting to write all the chapters all at the same time that's extremely hard and when people have difficulty finishing their dissertations it often not always but often can stem from that approach and the reason for that is if you're working on all the chapters or many chapters simultaneously it's difficult to finish anyone because your attention is spread too thin if you instead pick a single chapter to write from start to finish not literally write the introduction first then the next section then the conclusion etc but pick a single chapter to finish before moving on to the next one it builds momentum it gives you a sense of accomplishment it gives you a task to figure out how to write a dissertation chapter through and it gives you a finish line right and that gives you momentum going into the next one and the next one and the next one it also helps you stick to a set of deadlines so let's say you've picked your chapter to start with you find the objects that are going to go in that chapter and you start brainstorming what you need to do in terms of research in terms of interviews in terms of analysis in terms of writing to uh to actually finish the different sections of that chapter right you put that together you rock that out you create your deadlines you road map that chapter out you can use the the tool that we use in the rockstar program you work with your advisors you work with your mentors you talk it through in the in the slack community with the coaches and with each other and then you do the same for the next chapter and the next chapter and the next chapter you write your conclusion and then you take a look at the chapters you've written so far and go back and write the introduction you might find that after you finish your introduction you need to edit some of the chapters a little bit so that they more tightly cohere with what you've now come up with is your dissertation's overarching argument that's how you edit that's one of the best ways to edit but you have to do that at the end right because you don't yet know what the overarching umbrella thing is yet so this is a good way to start if you're just beginning but what happens if you've already started right many of you are in the middle of your distributions many of you are at the very end and you just need to power through and get that last chapter or two out the door and then you're you're done so what happens if you're already started for example you might have a bunch of partially finished chapters and you're wondering how to finish what i'm going to recommend is for you to pick one to finish in the next set of weeks how many weeks is going to depend on your schedule and it's going to depend on your situation if you have a chapter that you can finish up in two weeks do that one if you have a chapter that you think you might need a couple months to finish that might also be a good one to pick right but it's going to depend on your situation and it's going to depend on your schedule but i'm going to recommend against picking the introduction as the chapter to finish unless that's the only chapter you have left in which case that's clearly the one you need to be working on but when you're trying to decide so let's say you need to finish chapter one there's some stuff you have to complete for chapter four and you still need to write the conclusion trying to decide between those three chapters i want you to think about which one is going to help you the most right now is there for example among those three options a chapter that will help you finish the other ones if it's done so for example if your chapter one if part of what you need to finish in chapter one is um doing you know writing up your analysis of a couple of interviews let's say and that's once you do that chapter one will be done let's say your chapter four comes back to those interviews it would make sense for you to finish chapter one because you need chapter one to be done for you to finish chapter four because they're dealing with the same interviews does that make sense another way to think about what's going to help you the most right now is to think about what you're using the chapters for obviously you're using the chapters to complete the dissertation itself right the administrative requirement of filing the dissertation that's a very important priority but it's not your only one right some of you might be using pieces of dissertation chapters for job applications or for conference presentations or for grant applications fellowship applications etc you might be publishing some of them so these things can help you figure out which chapter is going to help you the most right now if you finish it you can also use those other areas of life to help you finish those chapters so for example let's say you're trying to decide between in our in our same example chapter one chapter three in the conclusion they all need finishing you're not sure which one to to focus on right now but you also know that you have a conference presentation coming up that draws from chapter four focusing on chapter four right now because you have to write that conference paper will help you finish that first because you're using the fact that you have to write that conference paper to fill in chapter four right so that in that in this example chapter four might be the one to focus on so you're going to finish you're going to pick the one that's most useful for you to finish next right in the next however many weeks that might be might be two weeks might be six weeks might be eight weeks but pick the one that's going to help you the most and do that one first once you're done with that you're gonna pick the one that's gonna help you the most next and do that right and keep going down the line with however many chapters you need to finish [Music] okay so i'm going to stop sharing this for a minute if i can hello where did you oh i see okay come back there we go okay um uh and i'm gonna ask if there are any questions um i know some of you are in the middle of writing your dissertation some of you are just getting started and some of you are are desperately trying to finish up in the last last few weeks which is great and and push on and let us know how we can help you but are there any questions um about either getting started finishing up or figuring out what order chapters should go in and or what order sections of an individual chapter should go in you can put any questions that you have in the chat on the right hand side and i can address them okay it doesn't look like there are any questions well you can always ask me questions personally um in slack you can also ask any of the other rock star coaches we've all written dissertations and filed them many of us have also written books after that some of which are based on dissertation some of which are not um and so we're quite familiar with this process we've also worked with a lot of students um who are navigating this process so uh hit us up in slack you're welcome to ask questions during office hours you can also talk to your assigned individual coach if you want specific things addressed about your particular project like if there's a specific issue that you're struggling with about you know should i what should i do with this weird interview that i got or you know on this particular example what should go first or how do i address how do i figure out a good order for this um you can always ask us in slack in office hours uh thank you so much for joining us for this webinar on organizing your dissertation chapters our next webinar is a public webinar open to everyone so please invite your friends and that's coming up on april 18th and the topic of that webinar is prepping your alternative academic or post-academic career while you're in grad school so often times increasingly excitingly grad programs are encouraging people to institute grad students to explore alternative academic or post-academic careers and as we know most phds um have a diverse variety of careers of which the tender track is a very very small percentage and so we wanted to focus in this webinar on how to use the graduate school experience and the training that you're getting to actually prepare for an alternative academic or post-academic career and so we're going to have two speakers um jen poke who runs uh beyond the professoria a conference coming up in may um as well as the um uh the blog and resource and coaching practice uh from phd to life she's gonna be talking about how she coaches clients in developing and building their post academic or alternative academic careers and our ideas on fire's very own alexander sastre is also going to be talking about how she used graduate school to do exactly that so that's on coming up on april 18th you can register at ideasonfire.net events and i hope to see you there thanks so much and have a fabulous rest of your day

Channel: Ideas on Fire

Views: 280

Keywords: dissertation writing, dissertation help, dissertation, writing, graduate school, academia

Id: mfwydL9vrkU

Length: 43min 54sec (2634 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020