From Dissertation to Book, Second Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) - Softcover

Germano, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022606204X ISBN 13: 9780226062044

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

When a dissertation crosses my desk, I usually want to grab it by its metaphorical lapels and give it a good shake. “You know something!” I would say if it could hear me. “Now tell it to us in language we can understand!”

Since its publication in 2005, From Dissertation to Book has helped thousands of young academic authors get their books beyond the thesis committee and into the hands of interested publishers and general readers. Now revised and updated to reflect the evolution of scholarly publishing, this edition includes a new chapter arguing that the future of academic writing is in the hands of young scholars who must create work that meets the broader expectations of readers rather than the narrow requirements of academic committees.

At the heart of From Dissertation to Book is the idea that revising the dissertation is fundamentally a process of shifting its focus from the concerns of a narrow audience—a committee or advisors—to those of a broader scholarly audience that wants writing to be both informative and engaging. William Germano offers clear guidance on how to do this, with advice on such topics as rethinking the table of contents, taming runaway footnotes, shaping chapter length, and confronting the limitations of jargon, alongside helpful timetables for light or heavy revision.

Germano draws on his years of experience in both academia and publishing to show writers how to turn a dissertation into a book that an audience will actually enjoy, whether reading on a page or a screen. Germano also acknowledges that not all dissertations can or even should become books and explores other, often overlooked, options, such as turning them into journal articles or chapters in an edited work.

With clear directions, engaging examples, and an eye for the idiosyncrasies of academic writing, From Dissertation to Book reveals to recent PhDs the secrets of careful and thoughtful revision—a skill that will be truly invaluable as they add “author” to their curriculum vitae.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

William Germano is dean of the faculty of humanities and social sciences and professor of English literature at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Previously, he served as editor in chief at Columbia University Press and vice president and publishing director at Routledge. He lives in New York. 

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From Dissertation to Book

By William Germano

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Copyright © 2013 William Germano
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-06204-4

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................................
ix
1 Why This Book............................................................
1
2 Getting Started, Again...................................................
16
3 Nagging Doubts...........................................................
37
4 The Basic Options........................................................
44
5 Reading with an Editor's Eyes............................................
60
6 Planning and Doing.......................................................
77
7 Getting into Shape.......................................................
91
8 Making Prose Speak.......................................................
117
9 The Snow Globe and the Machine...........................................
137
10 What Happens Next.......................................................
149
Three Checklists...........................................................
157
For Further Reading........................................................
159
Index......................................................................
163

CHAPTER 1

Why This Book

The morning after defending the doctoral thesis is the first dayof a scholar's brave new world. But aside from recommendingthat you publish, graduate schools rarely take the time to explainjust what you should do with your dissertation. There'san expectation that the student is on the brink, or that thisexcellent piece of new scholarship will naturally find its placein the academic firmament. But how to get it there? And inwhat form?

Senior professors are often too far from the process to giveuseful advice. Junior faculty are usually just as puzzled asgraduate students by the mechanics of scholarly publication.But each year, many dissertations are written, and some arepublished. Among those, a few become widely read works thattransform not only what but how we think.

To the new PhD's eager question—"What do I do now thatI'm done?"—this book offers answers rather than an answer.There can't be just one. The key to any of them, though, is revision.

Revision can mean a lot of different things, maybe especiallyfor scholars. Young academics talk about revising their dissertationswhen they mean they will do hardly anything at all, orrewrite every sentence, or settle for something in between. Thisbook is in part about what can be done with a doctoral dissertation,choosing among your options, and moving forward. Whereveryou begin, and whatever investment of time and energyyou plan to make, your goal is to take something already writtenand make it more.

Taking that dissertation and making it "more" isn't a straightpath. It's a curving route with loops and off-ramps. Yet onceyou know where you want to go, there are more and less efficientways of getting there. From Dissertation to Book is itselfmeant to be a map, charting out your possibilities and givingyou driving instructions.

In more than twenty-five years as an editor of scholarlybooks, I saw hundreds of books through to publication. As anyeditor knows, you whittle down thousands of proposals to getto those chosen hundreds. My job also gave me the chance towork with other editors on the books that they were consideringfor publication. Sometimes I learned most from reviewinga thick stack of proposals other editors were keen to put forward.This part of the job is what I've described as editing fromten thousand feet up. An editor-in-chief has a few minutes tostudy how an editor presents a rationale, a marketing strategy,and a financial analysis, as well as what outside reviewershave to say, and what the author's own words tell about clarityand purpose. In ways I could hardly articulate, this bookis a product of my engagements with all those manuscriptsand proposals. When I formally left publishing for academia,I found that publishing hadn't quite left me. I've continued togive workshops and lead seminars on scholarly publishing andhave been fortunate to be invited to speak at institutions of differentscale and with different missions. But however diversethose colleges and universities may be, they have one thingin common: all are inhabited by scholars with ideas and thedesire to see those ideas brought to light for the use of others.

The difficult academic market has dispersed ambitious andtalented young scholars more thoroughly than ever before. Toland a tenure-track job at an institution one has never visited—orperhaps even heard of—before the on-campus interviewis no longer strange. The consequence of the shortage in fulltimejobs is that highly desirable candidates are being takenup by institutions that might never have had a crack at thema long generation ago. In recent years I have had more thanone conversation with a university administrator expressingdelight (bordering on disbelief) that the upside of the terriblejob market has been that that institution landed its first hiringchoices—a privilege very few colleges and universities can enjoyand none can take for granted.

For readers of From Dissertation to Book this state of affairshas two consequences.

First, we—scholars, their advisors, hiring committees, andpublishers—need to be reminded that there are talented, productiveteacher-scholars across a broad compass of institutions.There have always been fine teachers at every level ofacademia, but this market is now sending them into every cornerof the scholarly world. New PhDs will go into think tanksand research libraries and other organizations affiliated withcolleges and universities. Some will take positions at collegesand universities that are not teaching slots—as student advisors,foreign program directors, registrars, fundraisers, communicationsspecialists. Into those nonteaching positions will goscholars eager to see their research interests turn into scholarlypublications.

Second, the rising tide of adjunct faculty is a direct consequenceof the paucity of full-time slots. As the percentage ofpart-time faculty increases, so there will necessarily be an increasein the sheer number of part-time faculty with scholarlyprojects in search of publishers. One of the unresolved politicalissues within the modern academy is the conflict between institutionalmission and a reliance on part-time appointments.From Dissertation to Book aims to function as a sort of writingcoach. This book can't resolve the larger structural conflictswithin the academy. But it's important to recognize that asdoctoral students earn their degrees and face a market thatoffers even fewer full-time positions than it did an academicgeneration ago, there will be more scholarly labor in danger ofdisappearing off the academic face of the earth.

At exactly the same time that the academic labor force isstruggling to determine what opportunities lie ahead, scholarlypublishing struggles with its own survival issues as it facesquestions of technology and dissemination, declining institutionalsupport and shifting outlets, changes in reading habitsand access, and the clamor for free open...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 022606204X
• ISBN 13: 9780226062044
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 177
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar