“nulla dies sine linea”
~ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia
A decade ago, twelve of us – eight doctoral students and four post-docs – gathered around a seminar table at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University. Professor John Gager greeted us in his consistently cheerful and kind way. It was the beginning of a new academic year, and as fellows at the center we would be meeting weekly to workshop our dissertation and book chapters. After a round of introductions, Professor Gager explained the purpose of the seminar: “Throughout graduate school, you are taught to tear scholarship apart and critique arguments you read. The goal of this seminar is different. Here, you will learn how to build up your colleagues’ writing and to help them produce the best possible work they can.” I soon realized that what he meant was that we would be devoting our time to helping each other articulate arguments with greater clarity, sharpen analyses, streamline chapter structures, and strengthen prose – in short, to be better scholars. The seminar was designed to teach us to be good colleagues, to encourage us to lift each other up, to think about our research and our careers not as a zero-sum game but as a collaborative effort in which each other’s accomplishments and successes ought to be celebrated. In short, the seminar taught us to improve not only our own work but also the work of our colleagues, and to recognize this process as a deeply satisfying and meaningful process.
It was not until I arrived at the Theology Department at Fordham University as a newly-minted Ph.D. that I realized how lucky I had been to participate in the CSR’s seminar and how revolutionary Professor Gager’s approach had been. My new department’s doctoral students had solid training, fascinating research topics, supportive mentors, and kind colleagues. But they lacked a regular venue in which to share their writing with peers, test out their arguments as they were still forming, think through burgeoning ideas in conversation with others, experiment with novel writing techniques and styles before sending drafts to their advisors, and gather honest yet well-meaning feedback from an insightful and diverse group of scholars who were invested in their success. Also, they rarely had firm deadlines, and so months and even semesters could pass without drafts being submitted – busy schedules, writer’s block, perfectionism, being overwhelmed by ambitious projects, and other barriers often stood in the way of starting messy first drafts or polishing final chapters. With the help of my department chair, we set out, tentatively at first, to establish our department’s dissertation seminar, inspired by Professor Gager’s model. The seminar became an opportunity for advanced doctoral students to workshop their dissertation chapters in a supportive and productive environment.
Facilitating our department’s dissertation seminar became one of my favorite teaching experiences. I recently passed along the responsibility to one of my colleagues, and that has given me the opportunity to step back and reflect on the process of creating such a seminar. I am sharing the seminar’s goals, the practical details, and other lessons learned here, for those looking to establish their own departmental or interdisciplinary dissertation seminars.
We set several goals for our seminar. First, I hoped that the seminar would help students better meet their dissertation writing goals. I also hoped that it would allow them to share their work in a supportive environment and receive constructive feedback as they write and revise, hone professional skills related to presenting and responding to academic research in formal settings, learn about each other’s diverse research topics and methodologies, and create an intellectual community of colleagues who are invested in each other’s work and well-being. As I reminded my students, my overarching goal was to help them write – and complete and defend – good dissertations, and to feel proud of their scholarly accomplishments. Sometimes, the most important aspect of the seminar was that it imposed a deadline: the need to share a chapter draft with peers can be a great motivator to write. One of my favorite phrases, adopted from the world of journalism, is “the deadline is the muse.”
Our dissertation seminar met every other week over the course of the academic year. Each meeting lasted two hours. Meeting every two weeks allowed us to keep a steady rhythm while not becoming a burdensome responsibility, leaving enough time for writing and other commitments between meetings. The seminar was open to all doctoral students at the dissertation-writing stage, including those preparing proposals. During each meeting we discussed one dissertation chapter or proposal draft; by the end of the year each participant had workshopped two pieces of writing.
Seminar participation is optional in our department; students are encouraged to participate but not required. It is a zero-credit course, so it appears on students’ transcripts but they do not get graded. As a new academic year approached, I sent an invitation to all of our doctoral students explaining how the seminar works and the benefits of participating, and I asked students to let me know if they planned on joining in the new year. I also forwarded the invitation to my faculty colleagues so that they could encourage their students to register. I often asked faculty members to tell me if there were particular students who would especially benefit from the seminar, so that I could reach out to them personally and know what’s going on and support them accordingly. Once I had the group assembled, we found a mutually convenient time for regular seminar meetings.
The seminar was most successful when participants attended regularly, and so I asked that students commit to attending every session over the course of a year (illness, family emergencies, job interviews, and so on notwithstanding). It could be held in-person, virtually, or hybrid. The seminar works best when it is built on trust, commitment, and consistency, and that requires the investment of each member; it cannot be regarded casually, as a thing to drop into once in a while.
The seminar participants were all doctoral students in our department, but their areas of research, their fields, and their methodologies differed considerably. Each seminar brought together biblical scholars, historians of religion, systematic theologians, and ethicists, and this diversity was essential to the success of the seminar. At the first meeting of each year, I told students to look around the room: this is your audience, so when you write, have these people in mind – some of them are experts in your field and know the primary sources and scholarly debates well, others work in adjacent fields and need some background to understand what you are writing, and yet others need to be told the stakes of the argument or be convinced that what you are researching is important enough to read and engage. After all, almost every dissertation or book ideally speaks to different tiers of readers: experts in the topic at hand, scholars in the subfield, and colleagues in the broader discipline or adjacent disciplines, if not also a wider interested readership. Rather than imagining such an audience in the abstract, each student could write directly and concretely for the members of the seminar.
To facilitate helpful discussion, each participant was asked to pre-circulate a dissertation chapter at least one week in advance of the session during which it would be discussed, along with a short cover letter situating it within the dissertation and providing any other information that might be useful for the reader, including aspects about which they are particularly eager for feedback. The chapter could be at any stage in the writing process – e.g. a rough first draft that a student would like help figuring out how better to structure and revise, a more polished chapter that they would like to strengthen for use as a writing sample for a job application, a long chapter that they are thinking about splitting into two separate chapters, and so on. Sometimes, a student sent just a few pages of outlining when they had trouble turning notes into paragraphs of prose. Those who were at the dissertation proposal-writing phase were welcome to share a draft of their proposal in lieu of a chapter. I encouraged students to keep chapters under 50 pages, though sometimes students sent chapters far longer that had gotten unwieldy or far shorter when they were feeling stuck. The main goal is to share work-in-progress that students are eager and open to revising; it is often best for a student to circulate a chapter they want help figuring out how to continue working on most effectively, rather than one they think is finished and thus do not want to revise further. It is the job of the seminar participants, I always tell students, to help a writer figure out how to move forward, whether that entails deciding how to begin writing or determining when to stop, and everything in between.
In preparation for each seminar meeting, participant were expected to read the pre-circulated chapter twice: once simply to read it through, and a second time to think carefully about the argument, structure, style, questions that arise, and ideas and suggestions for improving it (I learned this practice of double reading from Professor Gager as well). I asked students to come to the seminar ready to contribute thoughtfully and constructively to each discussions, and they usually arrived with annotated drafts and lists of questions and suggestions (of course, sometimes life intervened, and only some of them were able to prepare adequately, but even reading half a chapter can lead to helpful advice). After each seminar meeting, students are encouraged to share their notes and edits with the author of the chapter so that they can include this feedback in their revision process.
In addition to circulating their own work, each participant was asked to serve as a formal respondent for a colleague’s chapter once each semester. This required preparing a 10-minute response (approximately 4-5 pages) that includes a brief summary of the argument, a discussion of what works particularly well already, and questions, observations and suggestions aimed at improving the chapter and initiating discussion in a productive fashion. It can be helpful for the participant whose chapter is being discussed to hear back what they have tried to articulate, and to see how it has been received by the reader. Unpacking and responding to someone else’s dissertation chapter can also help a student understand how to approach their own work critically and constructively, and to ask oneself: do I have an engaging introduction? have I articulated my thesis? are the stakes clear? have I provided enough of a roadmap for my reader? have I avoided repetition? and so on. I encouraged the tone of the response to remain collegial and generous, and the discussions aimed at helping colleagues improve their work and inspiring them to continue writing, rather than discouraging them with harsh takedowns.
We began each seminar meeting as follows. First, I gave the student whose work is being discussed an opportunity to tell the group anything they wanted to share. Usually, this was used mainly to thank the group for reading their work, and perhaps pointing to particular issues they wanted to make sure we addressed; sometimes, they provided additional context for the work or their writing process. This is a good way of ensuring that the author sets the tone and drives the meeting. Then, we turned to the respondent, who delivered the response, which both summarized the work and posed questions and suggestions. Thereafter, I asked the author to respond and discuss the issues raised by the respondent. All this usually lasted between 15-20 minutes. Finally, I opened the discussion up to the remainder of the seminar participants, who asked questions and reflected on the issues raised. The conversation generally flowed well, and improved over the course of the semester as students gained practice discussing work together: participants learned to follow the strand of conversation, such that when we were discussing one aspect – say, the chapter’s argument – we allowed everyone with related comments or suggestions to chime in before moving to the next topic. I also reminded students to make sure that everyone could speak before jumping into the conversation a second time, and to be cognizant not to dominate the conversation (these, too, are important skills and practices to learn in academia, and when they became a challenge in our group I met with students individually to shift the class dynamics).
Some sessions ended up focusing on a chapter’s structure, and we often outlined and rearranged paragraphs or sections as we attempted to assemble evidence into a coherent flow. Other sessions focused on helping an author articulate an argument – sometimes, an author thinks they already have an argument but over the course of the seminar realizes that their evidence actually points elsewhere, and sometimes an author comes to the seminar with the explicit goal of having the group help them figure out their argument. We wrote and rewrote on the whiteboard, used google docs, asked questions, debated the merits of particular writing styles or the use of block quotes, and so on. We looked at the chapter from the macro and the micro levels, including the wording of certain phrases, translation choices, or the incorporation of quotes.
At the beginning of the year, I often guide the conversation. With time, students learn how to ask the important questions themselves, without much guidance from me. Can you articulate the chapter argument? What are the stakes of this argument? Is there an interesting passage or anecdote that can be used as a hook for the introduction? Is there a way of weaving your review of scholarship more seamlessly into the flow of the chapter? Can we work on the transitions between sections? Each student becomes, through the seminar, an expert facilitator in their own right, each with their own style of probing and reflecting. By the end of the year, I am confident that almost everyone could run their own seminar.
Participants who are further along in their projects or have participated in the seminar for several semesters serve as resources to those just beginning or joining for the first time. For example, students in the final stages of dissertation writing offer advice to those just conceiving their proposals. Those who are formatting their dissertations caution their peers about how to approach citations or translations. Advice is shared about how to response to a mentor’s feedback, or to balance teaching with writing. Students become colleagues and mentors, and sometimes life-long writing partners.
Challenges certainly arise. Sometimes, a student might dominate the conversation, which can be disruptive. A student might be too shy or lack confidence and thus not meaningfully engage with the work being discussed. Sharing work with peers demands vulnerability and trust, which can be particularly painful in the case of plagiarism. Witnessing students suffer through writer’s block or depression is hard, and sometimes a dissertation seminar is not enough to push a student to the finish line.
I am clear, from our very first meeting, that our seminar is a writing seminar – it is aimed at helping each student write the best dissertation possible. It is not an opportunity to chat in general about the research topic, debate the state of the field, hear about other parts of the dissertation, discuss the merits of the analysis, or wonder about how the topic relates to other issues. It is about taking the draft at hand and helping the author improve every aspect of it – its substance and its style – as much as possible. Reading one another’s work can indeed lead to interesting conversations, and I encourage students to have those conversations with one another in the lounge or over lunch. When the conversation veers in such directions, I remind students of the task at hand and steer the discussion back to the chapter itself.
I saw my role as facilitator. I ensured that all of the students in the room spoke before I do. I always came to the seminar with a stack of paper and a pen, and I took furious notes, recording everyone’s questions, writing down what the author says in response, and making a list of suggestions as they come up. Working as the scribe helped me not jump in too quickly, allowing everyone else to weigh in; teaching students how to help one another is one of the goals of the seminar, after all. At the end of the seminar meeting, I gave the notes I produced to the author, who could then use them as a guide to revisions, as they saw fit. If a participant had interest, it was also possible to record the session (if all participants consented), even in an in-person seminar, so that the author could return to the discussions later – often, what an author says orally during a discussion can be transcribed and included in the chapter, and it’s a shame to let the ephemerality of speech stand in the way of fluid prose. A tangible document or recording can be especially helpful for returning to the discussion a day or two later, in a calmer state of mind.
Some semesters, we dedicated the last half hour to discussing a variety of topics related to research and writing, often guided by the seminar participants’ interests and needs. We discussed cultivating healthy and productive writing habits, improving writing styles, effectively building courses around research interests, articulating research projects in fellowship and job application materials, writing conference abstracts for submission and delivering conference papers, developing articles for publication and demystifying the peer review process, or discussing book proposals. In these contexts, I tried to offer supplemental reading recommendations.
My favorite book about writing clearly and beautifully is Helen Sword’s Stylish Academic Writing (Harvard University Press, 2012), though Sword’s other books are also worth reading, and Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s “They Say / I Say”: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (W. W. Norton, 2015) can be helpful for writing basics. I always recommend Eviatar Zerubavel’s The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, and Books (Harvard University Press, 1999), for its blend of practical and theoretical reflection on writing and time management, not least because his method is driven by introspection, encouraging each person to figure out when and how they write best within the confines of their current life circumstances and allowing these insights to guide one’s writing choices and habits. And I have found Paul J. Silvia’s How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing, 2nd ed. (APA, 2019) to be persuasive for students who are reticent to write, even minimally, each day or who feel like they face insurmountable obstacles to begin writing at all. I introduce other resources too, such as Joan Bolker’s Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis (Owl Books, 1998) and William Germano’s From Dissertation to Book (University of Chicago Press, 2013, 2nd ed.).
I have learned a lot from the students in my dissertation seminar. I have watched students transform from timid to bold writers; those who entered wide-eyed and overwhelmed over time begin dispensing wisdom and encouragement to others; with support, they rise to the occasion. I understand, more and more, that different people react to different writing styles (first, second or third person? measured or dramatic prose? contemporary anecdotes? arguments upfront or surprises at the end? road mapping or narrating?), and that there are many ways of writing to effectively connect with readers. My students have pushed the boundaries of academic writing: questioning conventions, experimenting with new styles, and redefining the genre in important ways. Watching the process unfold in real time, as students debate the merits and aspirations of their writing styles, has been particularly inspiring and humbling for me.
In our preliminary meeting, I tell students that writing is an inherently collaborative enterprise: we write in conversation with previous scholarship; we write for a future audience; we share drafts with colleagues and mentors; we submit work for peer review and to editors and editorial boards; we anticipate reviews of our books; we hope that our work will be engaged. Writing is never an entirely solitary practice, and if we dispense with the notions that it is or ought to be, we can embrace that writing is not only collaborative but also communal. The dissertation seminar does not only promote this idea, it models it.
Ultimately, the dissertation seminar can serve as a way of promoting a different kind of academic culture, which values helping one another do the best possible work while insisting on the highest of academic standards: in short, creating rigorous, kind, collaborative, lasting scholarly communities.