Dissertation Topic Problems

[veilside79]

I'm having some serious problems in narrowing down a dissertation topic. I've come up with close to a dozen proposals but my advisor hasn't been enthusiastic on any of them. In fact, once he flatly said "over my dead body" when I proposed one that I felt, as did my colleagues and other professors, had immense potential.

I'm in a top ten PhD program with a leading scholar in the field as my advisor. He's been advising dissertations for decades so I tend to trust his judgement on this, yet can't help but feel defeated before the two years of the dissertation even begins. I've heard of imposter syndrome before, but can't help but feel that I've completely let down my advisor and that sheer luck is the whole reason that I landed a seat in this PhD program. I obsess with trying to impress him and have a great idea for my dissertation but only manage to produce uncomfortable expressions on his face before he tears down my ideas. It's brought me to the point where I feel no confidence in aproachng him with other ideas now.

Is this normal? Am I simply experiencing the normal PhD experience or is there something else going on here? Is there any advice that others can impart on me? I feel as if there's nobody I can turn to in this that I know in real life--I have few close friends who are college graduates, let alone PhD students; from family I'd just here a bunch of bloated and empty inspirational lines; from fellow PhD students and other professors I'm too afraid to expose my ineptitude, so the anonymity of GradCafe will have to suffice.

Thanks in advance.

[eowyn]

First of all, its not you.  Secondly, don't try to pick a topic that you think will impress people.  It doesn't work that way.  Take some time to think about what you really care about, and what you really want to dig into, no matter how much you fear what other people might think.

 

If you care enough about a topic, it means that you will bring the necessary drive to enlighten others its relevancy.  Furthermore, when your advisor is critically evaluating your project, you will understand its overarching significance, and you can communicate that much more effectively. 

 

Go back to square one.  What is it that you care about?  What do you know about the literature in the field?  What potential gaps do you see in that literature?  What potential sources are out there that you can use.  How can these sources reveal/explain something about the bigger picture? Rinse and repeat, and good luck.

[TMP]

It sounds to me that you're in coursework stage, at least in  your first or second year.  You have TIME.  Step back and think about what large historiographical questions that occupy your mind.  Your adviser knows what he's doing- he wants to be able to supervise a dissertation that he can deal with for as long as it takes you to finish (for him, a minimum of 5 years), including line-editing it at the end.  Take advantage of your final paper assignments in your courses- try to use them as a way of exploring various topics and how scholars have dealt with them over time.

 

Also, know that when you engage your topic with others, more of your time will be spend convincing others of its significance within historiography; the little stories that make up the dissertation are just for fun.  Otherwise known as "why should we care?"  That's what we do a lot of time as scholars.

 

Who says that you have to settle on a topic right now?  You'll know when you need to when it's time to write that dissertation proposal.

 

Also, I would not be so concerned about the "ranking" of your PhD program you put up there.  Nobody cares.  That's the truth.  People care more about who your adviser is, especially if you're in a small or highly competitive subfield.

[hdunlop]

Also, know that when you engage your topic with others, more of your time will be spend convincing others of its significance within historiography; the little stories that make up the dissertation are just for fun.

 

This is at the heart of what I wish I understood -- not just heard or knew but understood -- last admissions cycle.

[Riotbeard]

What papers are you writing for seminars?  You should be moving toward this somewhat organically (at least in my experience, to be fair, I know others who have struggled).  Have you written any papers for your adviser that he liked?  What is your masters thesis on?  I got to my dissertation through the snowball effect.  A few papers turned into a Master's thesis, turned into a passion, then exploratory research, then a prospectus, and now I am in the research phase.  I know other people kind of sit and think their way towards a diss more systematically, but you might want to calm down, and consider what you find interesting, and work on that.  If that seems viable for a bigger project, then move forward.  You got into this program so they clearly found your sop interesting.