Some excerpts:
- The economic realities of academic publishing, coupled with exciting interpretive and methodological possibilities inherent in new media and digital humanities, mean that the day of the dissertation as a narrowly focused proto-book are nearly over.
- It takes too long. It's too isolating.
- It's a hazing ritual passed down from another era, retained because the Ph.D.'s before us had to do it.
- The majority of dissertations, produced in paper and ink, ignore the interactive possibilities of a new-media culture. And book-length monographs don't always reflect students' career goals or let them demonstrate skills transferable beyond the borders of academe.
- ...allow students to write three or four publishable articles instead of one book-length text.
- The economic realities of academic publishing... mean that the day of the dissertation as a narrowly focused proto-book are nearly over.
