The Student Room Group
Reply 1
I'll tell you what I'm doing mine on, since our interests appear to be similar - it may spark your brain into thinking about what you want to do, who knows?

Mine's on gender ambiguity in the theatre, from ancient to modern. I'll be dealing with three main epochs of theatre - ancient (plays here will include Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae, Sophocles' Trachiniae, and Euripides' Medea), Shakespearean (men playing women characters who dress up as men, such as Viola in Twelfth Night, and Portia in The Merchant of Venice; plus I will be talking about my belief that Ariel in The Tempest is female), and modern drama (Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine, specifically). I'll be trying to work out how the gender-ambiguous influences filtered down from ancient drama and why it's important generally, as well as tackling various issues within the individual plays. The Ariel issue I suppose will be the crux of it.

If you want something modern, there's a great deal out there in the way of feminist drama (Caryl Churchill is a good start - another good feminist play by her is Top Girls). Charlotte Perkins Gilman is another well-known 20th century female writer, probably best known for her short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (in fact, there's a really good collection called 'Women Who Did', edited by Angelique Richardson, which focuses on short stories by mainly 20th-century female writers). Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood might be other areas of interest; and Simone de Beauvoir, while famous for her seminal work 'The Second Sex', also produced a lot of excellent fiction.

Hmm that's about all I can think of really! Hope it helps you on your way to dissertation zen :cool:
Thank you :smile:

I was thinking about something along the lines of... "The Intersection of Race and Gender in 20th Century African-American Fiction"... I wrote an essay that was quite similar to that (it was mainly about Nella Larsen's work) in an American Studies course I took, and I really enjoyed writing it and I got a first on it. Some names that come to mind, although I haven't read most of them yet, are Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, etc. But are you allowed to write about American literature in English literature degrees? :confused: I'm sure it depends on the university.. but generally?
Reply 3
I'm sure you can...I was looking at the list of dissertations that people are doing the other day and someone's doing what I would call more of a sociology essay (something about the responsibility that disabled writers bear, or something) and some people are even doing creative writing dissertations (which I really don't think you should be allowed to do). Plenty of people doing American Lit dissertations too. By that logic you wouldn't be allowed to do your dissertation on Irish lit, or African lit, or anything...
Reply 4
ah, don't talk to me about dissertation topics. I've spent the last two weeks of my life chaging my mind every 20 seconds about what topic to do. I've finally done it now, and have handed it in - though at my uni most of the proposals get rejected so I might have to end up doing a normal course...

I'm doing mine on the reworking and retelling of British folktales in contemporary poetry, literature and music. It looks really interesting as there's loads of stuff I can comment on, so I'm quite happy with it.

I would suggest emailing a tutor who has similar research interests to your topic, and just tell them that you have a vague idea of doing this and that. I did this, and then we met up and had a much more detailed discussion about it, where I refined my ideas. Good luck :smile:
Reply 5
We're not allowed to do an essay that is predominantly American Lit because there is noone in the department who specialises in this area and therefore noone to supervise us. We have to do something that fits vaguely along the lines of the tutor's research. I'm having a meeting to discuss my proposal soon. I read when i was doing an essay on Tale of Two Cities that Lucie is a caricatured character that Dickens repeats over his novels. This intrigued me so i was thinking about examining Dicken's portrayal of women and if he uses 2/3 stock characters repeatedly, Mme Defarge and Pip's sister for example. Hopefully it doesn't get rejected, i'm really enthusiastic about doing a dissertation but there's so many reasons out of my control that means i oculd be rejected. xx
Reply 6
I did a dissertation as part of a project on the use of Rhetoric in Renaissance literature but by the sound of it that isn't the sort of thing you are intrested in! Sorry!! Good luck with it though! I don't know why I shy away from modern literature study if i can help it..oh well :smile: x
Reply 7
Don't worry too much about the title. Your ideas will evolve/completely change as you start reading and writing in earnest. So long as you have a general area of research, which isn't so wide as "20th Century Women" (pointless), and isn't so narrow as "Cat-owners called Betty living in the South Lancashire town of Gubbins, in April 1952" (restricting), you should be fine. Tutors *know* how research develops, so what they want is more an indication of what you're looking at than exactly what your conclusion will be (which is often implicit in the eventual title).
Good luck!
Reply 8
*tries in vain to start her dissertation*
*fails*
I hate introductions :frown: :mad:
Reply 9
Angelil
*tries in vain to start her dissertation*
*fails*
I hate introductions :frown: :mad:

I agree, introductions are a pain... Just write it last, then. Start writing the actual dissertation and then add the introduction once you've written it. I often end up doing that with longer essays, and so far it's worked for me. It's nice because that way you can tailor your introduction to the actual structure of your work without having to rewrite it several times (the intro, that is).
Reply 10
Sounds like a plan. I tried starting the introduction and it's hovering at the 380 level at the moment...I'm guessing the intro has to be about 1000 words. Damn :frown:
Reply 11
Angelil
Sounds like a plan. I tried starting the introduction and it's hovering at the 380 level at the moment...I'm guessing the intro has to be about 1000 words. Damn :frown:

Hmm, I wouldn't be too dogmatic about this if I were you (unless the regulations state how long the individual parts of your dissertation have to be, obviously, but I doubt that). Whether you'll actually need that many words for the intro really depends on how complex the structure of your argument is. After all, the main function of the introduction is to present your argument in a nutshell, and if you can do that in 500-600 words, why not? No-one likes an introduction that's longer than it needs to be, and you might even need that extra page for your main part. If you find you've got nothing more to add to the intro at the moment, just leave it for later and get started on your first point.
Good luck!:smile:
Reply 12
Cheers :hugs:
*in the midst of dissertation arghness*