Honors in American Studies
| General Information | Procedural Matters and Deadlines |
General Information
Students wishing to graduate with honors in American Studies must compose an honors thesis during their senior year. An honors thesis is a challenging enterprise to be undertaken only by the most ambitious and thoughtful students, but it is also an invigorating and rewarding intellectual experience. As a work both of scholarship and interpretation, a thesis undertakes extensive research into a given subject and makes a critical argument about that subject. It aims to master the relevant background and thinking in an area of inquiry while making a fresh contribution to ongoing scholarship. Ideally, the thesis should serve as a capstone experience to your undergraduate education in American Studies.
In your junior year and during the summer preceding your senior year, you should begin contemplating the possibility of doing a senior thesis. You should consider the following:
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Schedule: Do the obligations and requirements of your final year at Brandeis permit you to devote the time necessary for the project? Although students receive two full course credits for the thesis their senior year (signing up for AMST99d both fall and spring semesters), the time commitment and intellectual effort may be more than two typical courses. Character: Although you will be working closely with your advisor, the thesis is your project. You will be the initiator, designer, composer, and final judge of the direction and shape of your thesis. It is essential that you possess the ability to work independently and to plan your time rigorously. Of course, your advisor and other professors in the American Studies Department will be available for help, guidance, and encouragement. Personal Goals: You should consider whether the skills tested and acquired in writing a senior thesis will be of practical use in your chosen career path or fulfill your own sense of personal accomplishment. These skills include the ability to manage time independently, to master a complex body of information, to present your findings and make your arguments lucidly and forcefully, and to defend your position articulately in a one-hour oral examination. Curiosity: Perhaps most important to the ultimate success of your thesis, consider whether it addresses a subject you have genuine interest in and enthusiasm about. Does the subject engage you emotionally as well as intellectually? Does it address a question you need answered? Is the subject something you truly want to live with and think about for the better part of a year? |
If a thesis is important to your sense of professional development or personal accomplishment, and if you have a subject you are curious and excited about, you should approach a professor in the American Studies Department and express your desire to undertake an honors thesis.
Procedural Matters and Deadlines
After signing in to AMST99d with your thesis advisor, your first formal task, as part of the Honors Colloquium, you will be to compose a three-to-four page project description and a short bibliography of relevant works (the "Honors Proposal"). The Honors Proposal asks for a tentative title of your thesis, a short description of its focus and statement of its methodology, and a list of research sources. Obviously, in the course of your inquiry, the direction of your thesis and its argument may well change from this initial blueprint. The Honors Proposal statement is a rough signpost to your subject and tentative line of inquiry-- where you are looking and what you think you're going to find there. It is typically due the last week of September of your senior year.
Throughout the fall semester, you will be working with your advisor-- meeting perhaps once a week for an hour, more if need be. The bulk of your research, collection of notes, organization, and the rough skeleton of your thesis should be hammered out during the fall semester. Your work and diligence during the fall semester will probably determine the ultimate success or failure of your project. This is the time to make mistakes, go down blind alleys, reorder, rethink, and fall back and punt. At this stage, even a radical reordering of your project is possible and maybe even necessary. But by the end of the year, you should have the bulk of your research done, the overall shape of the project should be clear in your head, and a good deal of it should be on paper in early draft form. Ideally, you should be able to give a chapter or two to your advisor for evaluation over winter break.
You should probably use the winter break to get ahead of the game. After all, this is the only time you will have to work exclusively on your thesis without the burden of your other coursework and the general madness of your last semester at Brandeis. Similarly, the two "vacation" breaks in the spring semester should be held for work on the thesis.
During spring semester, you will complete the final composition of your thesis. As a rough timetable, you should probably have completed a first draft by mid-March. The month of April should be devoted to crafting a final version, with particular attention to formal matters (grammar, expression, and organization) and last minute double checking of facts, printing arrangements, etc.
You will need to prepare four (4) bound copies of your thesis -- one each for yourself and the members of your committee. One of these copies will be kept on permanent file in the American Studies Department. Your thesis is typically due on the first week of May in the spring semester of your senior year. After you turn in the final draft of the thesis, your advisor will decide if it is worthy of a defense.
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The Honors Colloquium: Throughout your senior year, in addition to the regular meetings with your individual faculty advisors, you will participate in an Honors Colloquium, a seminar group bringing together the honors students and members of the American Studies faculty. Your first task during the colluquium will be to compose your Honors Proposal. The colloquium is a forum to exchange information, report on progress, and foster a sense of community and shared purpose. The gatherings will be informal-- usually meetings over lunch, occasionally a more structured presentation on library research, proper citation, professional standards, or scholarly writing. The Thesis Committee: Your thesis committee consists of three members-- your advisor, a second "reader" from the American Studies Department, and a third "outside reader" from another department, whom the faculty will select. With the American Studies administrator, you will schedule a thesis defense that is mutually convenient for yourself and the committee. Note that if you have a double major and wish to graduate with honors in American Studies and another discipline, you may do so at the discretion of the other department but you must register for AMST99d and participate in the American Studies Honors Colloquium. The Defense: The thesis defense is a dialogue about the common subject at hand-- your scholarly and critical work. Your thesis is the shared occasion for a congenial but rigorous discussion, not a mean-spirited inquisition designed to trip you up. Remember: if you have done your work well, you will likely be better informed about your topic than the members of your thesis committee. You should be able to talk about your thesis articulately and to explain why you did what you did, why you arrived at certain conclusions and rejected others, what sources you considered, and perhaps why you didn't look at certain material or go down alternative avenues of inquiry-- why, for example, you found one collection of documents more useful and reliable than another. The defense typically takes one hour. Honors: After you have completed the oral defense, the committee will decide whether, taken together, the defense and the thesis merit one of the three degrees of honors awarded in American Studies. An affirmative decision for honors means that the committee unanimously agrees that, as a work of scholarship and interpretation, the thesis meets the university's and the department's criteria for academic excellence. If the committee decides in the affirmative, it will recommend to the department that the thesis be awarded one of the following ascending designations: Honors: The student has successfully completed and defended an honors thesis with distinction, in writing and person. High Honors: The student has successfully completed and defended an honors thesis with unusual distinction, in writing and in person. Highest Honors: The student has successfully completed and defended an honors thesis with the highest distinction, in writing and in person. Only the most original scholarship and eloquent presentation warrant this evaluation. |