Abstract

This talk introduces a book that I have just completed. It studies the transformation of the dissertation as a genre of academic writing and publication. It traces its root to the disputation that was widely practiced in medieval and early modern universities. It then will show a variety of early “dissertations,” texts that were produced to announce the time, venue, subject, and participants of the disputation. It then describes the factors that contribute to the formation of the modern dissertation. It closes with a brief analysis of the globalization of the doctoral dissertation in the contexts of nationalism and colonialism. This book challenges what today’s academics have taken for granted as a dissertation and invites the audience to consider what constitutes a scholar and his/her scholarship.