ENG 592 Graduate Proseminar II

Using other scholars’ dissertations can benefit your research in many ways.

Searching for dissertations can help you find recent, unpublished scholarship. Dissertations can be a good source to bring you up to speed on the current state of inquiry in your field, or at connect you with kindred spirits writing about similar themes and topics.

Citation chasing: Like articles or monographs, dissertations will include scholarship that can benefit you, but which you might not otherwise have found in your searches. This is especially true for finding a seminal work that might not come up in a search because, perhaps, it was published outside of the date range you selected for your search, or because it is “outside” of your topic, but still relevant and important to consider.

Reading other dissertations can help you identify a writing style you like, and can demonstrate a sense of the caliber of work you have to do for your own.

Keep in mind, though: Theses and dissertations – even though many of them are available electronically in full text – are not published works, and therefore have not gone through peer or other editorial review. Therefore, they might not be considered appropriate sources for your own work. Always check with your advisor. 

Dissertations and Theses Global: International in scope, this database offers indexing and text for dissertations and thesis spanning from 1743 to the present day. Full text for some dissertations prior to 1997, full text for most works added since 1997.

Search Google or Google Scholar! It is possible dissertation and thesis authors have deposited their works in an institutional repository, or link to them on their websites, either of which would make them freely available.