The Ph.D. Problem
Illustration by Stephen Anderson.
Louis Menand writes:
That it takes longer to get a Ph.D. in the humanities than it does in the social or natural sciences (although those fields also have longer times-to-degree than they once did) seems anomalous, since normally a dissertation in the humanities does not require extensive archival, field, or laboratory work. William Bowen and Neil Rudenstine, in their landmark study In Pursuit of the Ph.D., suggested that one reason for this might be that the paradigms for scholarship in the humanities have become less clear. People are uncertain just what research in the humanities is supposed to constitute, and graduate students therefore spend an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with a novel theoretical twist on canonical texts or an unusual contextualization. Inquiry in the humanities has become quite eclectic without becoming contentious. This makes it a challenge for entering scholars to know where to make their mark.
This is why I am now thinking of law school instead of a Classics Ph.D. Well, that, and the fact that I think I can’t really handle that much more of this stuff. I go through these jags every once in a while, especially with the Latin proficiency exams coming next week.
10 Notes