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    A Practical Guide to Writing a Successful Thesis in the Humanities
    A Practical Guide to Writing a Successful Thesis in the Humanities
    A Practical Guide to Writing a Successful Thesis in the Humanities
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    A Practical Guide to Writing a Successful Thesis in the Humanities

    By Zoltan Dragon

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    About this ebook

    Not another Academic Writing tutorial, A Practical Guide to Writing a Successful Thesis in the Humanities is about tips and tricks that can help students accomplish the task of writing a successful BA or MA thesis and enjoy doing it – to the extent it is possible. The author focuses on how to get into the mindset of writing a thesis, how to compose the most compelling thesis statement, logical structure and flow of argumentation, and on how to make the word processor behave. The book also gives advice on how to manage time and accomplish the most in research and writing. Far from being a manual or detailed walk-through of how to write a thesis, this book helps to get students over daily, minute problems before they overcome their thesis writing projects.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZoltan Dragon
    Release dateJun 25, 2012
    ISBN9781476332970
    A Practical Guide to Writing a Successful Thesis in the Humanities
    Author

    Zoltan Dragon

    Zoltán Dragon, PhD, is assistant professor at the Department of American Studies, University of Szeged, Hungary. His fields of research include: digital culture and theories, film theory, film adaptation, and psychoanalytic theory. His books: The Spectral Body: Aspects of the Cinematic Oeuvre of István Szabó (2006; Kindle ebook 2012), Encounters of the Filmic Kind: Guidebook to Film Theories (co-authored with Réka M. Cristian, 2008), and Tennessee Williams Hollywoodba megy, avagy a dráma és film dialógusa [Tennessee Williams Goes to Hollywood, or the Dialogue of Drama and Film] (in Hungarian, 2011), and A Practical Guide to Writing a Successful Thesis in the Humanities (2012). He is founding editor of AMERICANA - E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary and the publishing label AMERICANA eBooks, and head of the Digital Culture & Theories Research Group at his home university.

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      Book preview

      A Practical Guide to Writing a Successful Thesis in the Humanities - Zoltan Dragon

      A Practical Guide to Writing a Successful Thesis in the Humanities

      ©2012 Zoltán Dragon

      Smashwords Edition

      First edition, June 2012

      ISBN: 9781476332970

      A Practical Guide to Writing a Successful Thesis in the Humanities

      by

      Zoltán Dragon

      To my students

      Table of Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Preface

      Chapter One: The Start, or how to choose your topic and how to develop an argument

      The thesis statement and the research questions

      Mapping your topic: argument maps, mind maps, outlining your thesis

      Chapter Two: Structure, or how to break your topic down into parts of the thesis

      Block by block, step by step – go non-linear to make progress

      References, citations, quotations – how to and why

      Chapter Three: Word processing, or the dark art of managing written documents

      Alternative word processing applications

      Inserts: footnotes, page numbers, headings, images and tables

      Saving the day: backup

      Chapter Four: Time management – enjoy writing your thesis

      Time slots for writing, time slots for relaxing

      The final check: take a rest, proof-read, proof-read, and … ask others to proof-read, too

      Zoltán Dragon, PhD, teaches digital culture and theory, film theory, film adaptation, contemporary visual culture and psychoanalytic theory at the Institute of English & American Studies, University of Szeged, Hungary. He is author of the following books: The Spectral Body: Aspects of the Cinematic Oeuvre of István Szabó (2006; Kindle ebook 2012), Encounters of the Filmic Kind: Guidebook to Film Theories (co-authored with Réka M. Cristian, 2008), and Tennessee Williams Hollywoodba megy, avagy a dráma és film dialógusa [Tennessee Williams Goes to Hollywood, or the Dialogue of Drama and Film] (in Hungarian, 2011). He is founding editor of AMERICANA - E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary and the publishing label AMERICANA eBooks, and head of the Digital Culture & Theories Research Group at his home university. He supervises numerous theses on BA and MA levels each year, and leads a thesis writing seminar for American Studies majors.

      Acknowledgements

      I am indebted to a great many people who helped me formulate the thoughts and practices I lay out in this guide, in direct or indirect manner. First and foremost I would like to thank all my supervisors, especially Réka M. Cristian, a friend and colleague as well, who has never ceased to help me out with her keen and meticulous reading and criticism of writing my drafts either as a student or, later, as a researcher. I have learnt a lot from her way of opening up my texts for further critical points of dialogues and, indeed, for tidying up most of the clutter I diligently developed while absorbed in my self-importance in writing something highly scholarly.

      I learnt a lot from Parveen Adams as well, partly being there with her when she pulled the untied threads of my arguments in my MPhil thesis and dissected my entire theoretical background by asking the simplest questions about it; and partly by reading her simple-looking, Zen-like sentences that testified of her thorough and wise way of composing her projects.

      I have also benefited from my readings: the more I read and paid attention to structure and style, the more I got the feel of the trade of composing longer essays, then books. I also learned that one can easily develop the necessary skills for writing academic papers, as it is not really about talent. Talent comes handy, but is worthless without the skills to make space for it. I have, therefore, countless masters in learning to write in an academic setting – theorists, critics, or analysts, but even writers of all kinds of fiction, whose crafty constructions of sentences, choices of wording, sometimes saved my day.

      I am absolutely grateful for my students. While this book is for them, they should know that without the questions and problems they brought to me, this project could not have evolved at all. Moreover, without them, I would have never ventured to explore most of the trick and tips that helped me, too, in developing my own way of writing and working on my academic projects.

      Last but not least, I would like to thank my family – they have contributed to experimenting with a lot of techniques either directly, or even without knowing they were in fact involved in any writing process. The times they let me write or distracted from it have been equally invaluable.

      Preface

      During the last decade I have been supervising and evaluating bachelor and master theses at the Faculty of Arts, University of Szeged, Hungary, I met so many methods and practices concerning thesis writing that it would be hard to count them. Those that were successful, tempted me to engrave them as golden rules into a piece of stone, but the same rules turned out to be useless when adapted to other theses, by other students. Looking for the perfect recipe taught me that there is no such wisdom – at least not in a ready-made, compact format that could be applied to anyone in any situation. Perhaps that is why the institution of supervision has not faded away in

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