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Graduate Program: MA Thesis

How is the new thesis format different from the original one?

In the old format, students chose whether to do a 3-paper option (revising three seminar papers) or write a 60+ page thesis. In the new format, the 3-paper option has been replaced by a culminating essay (a research paper), and the thesis has become an honors option. Students must receive an A on the thesis to qualify for honors.

Should I use the old or the new format?

If you were admitted before Fall 2007, you may choose whichever you prefer. If you were admitted in Fall 2007 or after, you will do the new format.

Should I do the culminating essay or the thesis?

It depends on your needs. If you are planning to go on for a Ph.D., if you love research, and if you want the extra challenge and reward of the thesis, then you should do that option. If you want to finish your MA degree quickly, then do the culminating essay.

What does the culminating essay look like?

It is a thoroughly-worked-on 20-page research paper with a bibiography of at least 10 sources. It may  either be a new project or a revision of an older seminar paper. You select an advisor and a reader. If you are revising a seminar paper, you would probably ask the instructor of that seminar to be the advisor. Throughout the semester you’ll work closely with your advisor, and at the end of the semester you’ll give the final essay to the reader as well. At the end of the semester you will take an oral exam. See What Is the Oral Exam Like?

How do I sign up for the culminating essay?

Fill out the Thesis Sign-Up Form, specifying that you are going to do the culminating essay. It is available from the English department or online from the Useful Links section.

When I get this form, I register you for English 791, the thesis course. This means you will work out a schedule for independent work with your advisor and reader – there are no class meetings.

How do I sign up for the thesis?

First, keep in mind that this is an honors option, which means that you will need to have a GPA of at least 3.7, or special permission from the Director of Graduate Studies, to sign up for the thesis. If you qualify – or if the DGS has given you permission to do the thesis in spite of a low GPA – your next step is administrative. Fill out the Thesis Sign-Up Form, specifying that you are going to do the thesis. It is available from the English department or online from the Useful Links section. Remember that you will have to get an A on the thesis to qualify for honors.

When I get this form, I register you for English 791, the thesis course. This means you will work out a schedule for independent work with your advisor and reader – there are no class meetings.

Do I have to take English 792?

No. It is not required, just recommended. You can try to do the whole thesis in 791, if that's what you want to do. In that case, however, you must start working on the thesis the semester before, as it is virtually impossible to research and write a whole thesis in one semester. But there's no reason not to try; after all, you can always decide to do 792 if you run out of time.

What does an MA thesis look like?

It is generally 60-80 pages long, divided into three chapters of 20 pages each. The best way to think about it is as three seminar papers back to back. Often the first chapter is historical background while the second and third chapters are in-depth readings of particular texts. There may also be a brief introduction setting up the issue, and/or a brief conclusion summing up the significance of the argument. There are copies of old MA theses in the library if you want to take a look.

What should an MA thesis say?

MA theses often argue that a particular experience or emotional need in the author’s life shaped the text, or that the text, when read carefully, yields an interesting set of meanings. You should show your familiarity with the relevant criticism and cite critics, either to support your position or to critique those critics. The thesis does not have to be an original contribution to the field like a Ph.D. dissertation, but what it should do is show a thorough mastery of the field.

What should an MA thesis not say?

One common mistake MA students make is trying to write a short biography of the author under study. Do not do this. You need to make an argument and include only those biographical facts that support your argument. Another common mistake is assuming you need to cover everything your author wrote. This inevitably leads to hasty plot summaries. It’s usually best if you analyze only one or two texts, but certainly don’t take on more than four. Remember that for every primary text you analyze, there will probably be dozens of critical readings you have to study.

What does a prospectus look like?

A prospectus is a plan for the thesis you are going to write. Students should decide how the project will break down into chapters and then write a brief abstract of each chapter that is about half a page to a page long. The abstract is not legally binding, of course; your plans may change as you start writing; but it helps enormously to have this provisional plan at your side as you begin. At the end of the prospectus, give a bibliography in which you list all the works you’ve consulted or plan to consult. The prospectus is generally 4-8 pages long.

How do I use my advisor and reader?

It is up to you to arrange meetings with your advisor whenever you need advice. Since faculty are very busy, they will not necessarily pursue you to ask how things are going; you need to take the initiative. Make sure you have your advisor’s e-mail address; people are sometimes easier to reach that way. You should keep your advisor informed of the progress of the thesis through occasional calls or e-mails, even if you don’t meet directly. You will give your advisor each chapter as you finish them, and s/he will read and comment on them. The reader will receive a copy of the entire thesis (revised according to the advisor’s comments) a month before the oral exam. S/he does not see it earlier and does not need to be apprised of the thesis-writing process, though of course you can always talk to him or her if you feel you need help on a particular issue.

How do I allocate time for the thesis?

Because the thesis is a two-semester process, you will spend your time in 791 writing a prospectus, doing preliminary research, and hopefully drafting your first chapter.

In the second semester, you use the same Thesis Sign-Up form to ask me to sign you up for English 792, the Thesis Workshop. This is a one-credit course where you will meet occasionally with other students to discuss your progress on the thesis. During this time, you will finalize the second and third chapters and have your oral exam.

What do I do about the oral?

Contact your advisor and reader and set up a date. It is your responsibility to organize the time, but the advisor will bring the paperwork (the Thesis Approval Form This is a PDF Document) and book the thesis seminar room for you. This applies to both the culminating essay and the thesis. If you are writing a thesis, you will also need to bring the first page of the thesis to get your advisor’s signature.

What is the oral exam like?

In spite of its scary name, it is really a committee meeting in which both of your readers get together and discuss the thesis with you. Although it’s called an exam, try to relax and even enjoy it, since it’s an unprecedented chance to have two experts in the field thinking about your work.

The exam itself generally takes an hour. Your committee will ask some general questions designed to test your knowledge of the field as a whole (“why did you focus on poem x when it seems like poem y would have worked better?” “was she influenced by z, who wrote at the same time?”). They will ask some specific questions about the thesis itself (“on p.13 you say x, and I wondered why you think that”). They will ask you to say more about particular issues that seem to emerge from the thesis. They will ask you to speak about your own experience of the thesis: what you learned, what you enjoyed, what your argument is now. It is perfectly okay to say you don’t know the answer to anything. You are not being graded on your performance in the oral report, but on the thesis which you have already written, and the oral is just a chance for us to clear up questions and to get a sense of the kind of work that went into producing the thesis.

You will then be dismissed briefly while the committee members agree on what grade to give you (B is the lowest passing grade). Then you will be called back into the room, given the grade and any notes or annotations on the thesis committee members may have made, congratulated, and set free.

What is the schedule for writing the thesis?

Usually, it takes students a full academic year to complete the thesis. While this is a somewhat ideal schedule and real life will doubtless get in the way, do try to stick to it as closely as you can. If you can follow this schedule, you should be able to avert a major crisis in May when suddenly everyone has to drop everything to read your thesis, there’s no time to revise, your committee is furious at you, and you can’t get it filed on time.

Month Tasks/Goals
September
  1. File Thesis Sign-Up Form telling me to put you in English 791, hopefully listing advisor and reader; if you donŐt have them secured yet, you may still file the form, but it is incumbent upon you to find those committee members as soon as possible, since you cannot start working until you have secured them. If you are not sure whom to ask, consult with me or instructors whom you know from your coursework; tell us what topic you want to write on, and we can recommend people who might be able to help. (If you are doing a culminating essay that is a revision of a previously written paper, however, you will almost certainly be using the instructor of the course in which you wrote that paper as your advisor, and you will simply need to find a reader. However, this section is written for those students who are doing the full thesis, as the culminating-essay students will hopefully not have too much trouble writing/revising a 20-page paper within a semester.
  2. Draft your prospectus.
October
  1. Give the prospectus to your advisor and make sure that s/he approves the plan before you start writing. If you leap into the thesis without getting the prospectus approved, you are likely to go off on a drastically wrong path, and your advisor will probably insist that you rip up all your work and start over.
  2. Draw up a provisional schedule for writing each chapter, in consultation with your advisor. Generally speaking, you want to allow yourself a month to write each chapter and then about three weeks for your advisor to read and comment on it (during that time, of course, you can be working on the next chapter). Then give yourself a few weeks at the end to incorporate all the revisions.
  3. Start writing the first chapter.
November
  1. Finish Chapter 1 and hand it to your advisor so s/he can return it in December. You can then use the last few weeks of the semester to revise it according to your advisor’s comments.
December - January
  1. Try to write all of Chapter 2 so you can give it to your advisor when the semester starts in late January. That is the ideal schedule, but the holidays usually slow people down, so realistically you will probably just get halfway through Ch. 2.
  2. When the spring semester starts, register for 792 by filing a Thesis Sign-Up Form with the Director of Graduate Studies.
February
  1. If you didn’t manage to finish Chapter 2 over break, do it now and give it to your advisor; if you are on schedule, however, you should be getting your Ch. 2 back now and can start revising it.
  2. Start Chapter 3.
  3. You must file a diploma card with the Registrar’s office by the seventh week of the term in which you’re planning to graduate. Now would be a good time.
March
  1. Finish Chapter 3 and hand it to your advisor. Revise Chapter 2 according to the advisor’s comments. At this point, you and your advisor will be working hard to get Ch. 3 done in March so the revised version can be distributed. If worst comes to worst and it proves impossible to get the chapter written and read in March, you may end up distributing a thesis whose third chapter is unrevised, which is not the end of the world. But here’s where you’ll feel the benefits if you can indeed get Ch. 2 done over break.
  2. Start setting up the oral exam. This may involve a lot of scheduling difficulties as you try to accomodate three people’s different preferences, so it’s a good idea to start as early as the end of March. Try to schedule it for mid- or late April.
  3. Give all your committee members a copy of the whole thesis before April 1, so they have a few weeks to read it.
April
  1. If Ch. 3 has taken longer than expected and you’ve had to distribute an unrevised version of it, use the first couple weeks of April to incorporate your advisor’s comments. Otherwise, prepare for the oral exam by rereading the thesis, familiarizing yourself with the sources you’ve used, and thinking about the project as a whole.
  2. Take orals in mid- or late April. The committee will then sign your Thesis Approval Form This is a PDF Document. You should also bring three copies of your title page, incorporating the title of the thesis, your name, and the words ‘Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement of the degree of Master of Arts in English’ so your advisor can sign them.
  3. Use the last week(s) of April to start incorporating your committee’s final suggestions.
May
  1. Revise thesis according to committee’s suggestions and the formatting rules for the thesis. When it is completely done, you will need to print out three copies (with the signed title pages) and hand in to Rosenthal Library Office along with a check for $25.00.

What does an Advanced Writing Project look like?

The Advanced Writing Project is for MFA students and the last students who registered for our former MA in creative writing. The following list applies only to the students who are finishing their MA in creative writing; for information on MFA requirements please see the MFA website at http://qcpages.qc.edu/Creative_Writing. An Advanced Writing Project (the creative writing thesis) is a revised version of something you have been working on during your time at Queens, not a new project. For fiction, it should be no longer than 65 pages (a selection of short stories or novel excerpt). For drama, it should be one full-length or two one-act plays. For poetry, it should be 25 pages. We do not permit people to submit mixed-genre theses (poetry and prose together, for instance) except in very unusual circumstances, because we feel that the purpose of this thesis is to give you a chance to work intensively to perfect your writing in one genre. There is no oral exam. You may want to remind your advisor to file the Thesis Approval Form This is a PDF Document when s/he grades your project.

How do I get my professors to hurry up?

First, make sure you’ve given your committee enough time. It is not reasonable to expect anyone to read anything in under a week. When you turn in a chapter or the full thesis, agree on a reasonable date by which s/he can return it to you (two or three weeks is good), and if it doesn’t arrive then, a polite reminder or question is perfectly appropriate and may even be appreciated by a harried instructor who depends on an external nudge to remind her/him what’s due when.

Sometimes you can try everything to get in touch with your advisor and still meet a brick wall. There are faculty in our department who are notorious for never getting back to students, there are faculty who get embroiled in crises and let their teaching responsibilities drop, there are faculty who go out of town or change their contact information, and of course adjunct faculty may no longer be affiliated with QC at all. If you are frustrated at not getting results, double-check at the English Department (Klapper 601, (718) 997-4600) to make sure you have the right contact information and tell the Director of Graduate Studies what the problem is. S/He will intervene and contact the faculty member on your behalf.

Quite often, however, the problem is that the student is in a tremendous rush due to external pressures and is desperately trying to push through a thesis when it is simply not realistic. Several faculty members have indicated that a word about basic courtesy in this area must be said. Please do not pester your committee members with a barrage of e-mail and phone messages, turn in a half-done job in a mad rush at the last second, and force faculty to administer an oral exam at a moment’s notice. First of all, it is extremely rude, and your instructor will quite rightly resent it. How would you feel if someone dumped a 60-page document in your lap the night before (or even the hour before) it was due, forcing you to drop everything and read it? They have other thesis students, essays and coursework to grade, administrative obligations, professional and personal responsibilities. They cannot just drop everything to attend to your paper. As a matter of basic courtesy, respect their schedules. Second, it is counterproductive. This is one of the few times in your life that you can follow your own interests, exercise your imagination and curiosity, and enjoy the pleasure of mastering something. Why turn in something of which you feel ashamed? Third, to be rather crass about it, you need a 3.0 or B average to graduate and rushing the thesis may mean it will not meet the minimally acceptable standards.

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