New senior seminars for anti-thesis English majors

Joshua Goodman Assistant Life Editor

In these final weeks of the fall semester, many senior English majors are rushing to finish their thesis projects and papers, while others are using alternative means to finalize their matriculation at Vassar.

This is the first academic year that English majors are not required to write a thesis, an endeavor that entails a 40-page essay or project that ranges from classical essays to translations of famous literary works. The thesis was formerly required of all senior English majors in either the fall or spring semester.

The English Department began to debate this policy in the spring of 2001, and the change was enacted in the fall of this year.

“We debated it for a long time and it was very hotly contested,” said Robert DeMaria, the Professor of English on the Henry Noble MacCracken Chair.

Several English professors have openly criticized the elimination of the thesis requirement. English Professor Beth Darlington commented, “I have opposed the abolition of the thesis strongly and regret the Department’s decision.”

Dean of Studies Alexander M. Thompson III said that a thesis is an important “capstone exercise for the demonstration of independent and sustained scholarship for any discipline.” While students are now given the option not to write a thesis, DeMaria concurred that “the overwhelming majority of students should do a thesis, and most of them seem to want to.”

One factor that contributed to the English Department’s policy change was cases of students who were unable to graduate due to their inability to complete a thesis. In DeMaria’s experience, some of his own advisees did not receive Vassar degrees due to difficulties with navigating the thesis process. He explained, “There is now an out for some students who find that they are not equipped to do the thesis.”

Thompson said that one hazard of writing a thesis is that there is “too much independence, and some students may flounder without some greater structure that is provided.” DeMaria echoed that there is a “lot of independent work” involved in writing a thesis and students have to do “a lot of reading.”

However, English majors who do not write theses must still complete a rigorous in-depth study during their senior year. Some seniors elect to replace the thesis with a senior seminar course that includes a mandatory paper of approximately 25 pages. This Advanced Literary Study places comparable demands on students as a thesis in terms of the degree of focused study and the amount of writing, but is in a more structured format than a thesis.

According to DeMaria, the English curriculum itself compounded the difficulties of fulfilling a thesis requirement. The curriculum has become more “diffused” in recent years, which has given students more flexibility in class selection. But according to DeMaria, this flexibility has also partly “inhibited student ability to build up material for a thesis.” Many English majors were in the difficult position of writing a thesis without a cohesive groundwork from which to draw their work.

Inequity in the thesis advisory system was also problematic for faculty and students. Some professors received an abundance of advisees due to their particular area of expertise, while others had few or none. This created disparate workloads among faculty members.

It is difficult to forsee how the absence of a requirement will affect the number of English majors who opt to write a thesis. Of the 83 seniors majoring in English, approximately 40 have elected to write a thesis this semester. The true effect of the policy change cannot yet be determined since theoretically, all remaining seniors could choose to write a thesis in the spring.

Reactions from English majors to the policy change are varied, but they are largely in support of the Department’s decision. “I appreciate the Department’s decision to make the thesis optional,” said Emily Cogswell ’07, who is currently writing her thesis. Cogswell, like many in the English Department, thinks that all seniors should write a thesis, but “understands that a thesis may not be the best bet for everyone.”

The elimination of the English thesis requirement followed a general trend among Vassar departments. Few departments now require a senior thesis; among those that do are history and sociology. Many programs and departments, including the multidisciplinary media studies program, have created what is called a “senior project” instead of a thesis. Media Studies Director and Associate Professor of Anthropology Thomas Porcello described the project as “work that involves the creation of some form of a media object—whether in the form of an exhibition installation, performance, or Web site.” In the end, Porcello noted, “Projects are less based in ‘research’ than theses, but they are equally intellectually driven and sophisticated.”