The Work of a Professional Scholar 2: Supervising PhD Dissertations
May 3, 2012
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I’m glad you started this series. I just got home from work and was seriously planning on asking you somehow what the typical day in the life of Bart Ehrman looks like. I’m curious because you do so much writing, debates, radio shows, and teaching. I’m curious about what drives your energy and passion.
When I was doing my Master’s in New Testament at U of T what drove me was curiosity. Like you I was very evangelical in my teens and went to MBI. I thought alot about why I pursued continued to pursue this area of study later as a nonbeliever, but part of it I think is not only has Christianity shaped the world significantly but it has shaped my life. Also, I realize that there is a lot at stake for me as a nonbeliever is evangelicalism is right, so I wanted to make sure I was making the right decision being a nonbeliever.
I sometimes am too! I hope you enjoy the posts.
Would the “full examination of the history of the Greek manuscripts of Paul’s letter to the Galatians” happen to be that of Stephen Carlson?
Yes indeed! Terrific piece of work.
Makes me want to go back to graduate school….. *sigh*…. University days.
I had the same feeling. I still correspond occasionally with a beloved professor I had nearly 30 years ago. Much thanks to Prof. Ehrman for writing on this.
Indeed, the opportunity to learn from your students is one benefit of being a professor that had not occurred to me.
Was good to read this. In my retirement I have decided to give real attention to the NT and early Christianity…so reading about what these students are doing gives me cause for cheer. I certainly would love to know more of what the person who is doing the Matthew/Mark study has discovered.
For some ‘fun’, I am leading an Easter session of the diversity of the NT/Jesus at the church my wife is the interim pastor…these adults there are gobbling it up.
Thanks for the post. Are these dissertations published or to be published anywhere for reading once they are finished? Some sound very fascinating.
Well, all the students very much hope to have them published. The majority of the dissertatoins I have directed — in a remarkably wide range of areas (my students are very wide-ranging, not to mention smart!) — have been published as monographs.
(Perhaps you will discuss this under scholarship.) I’ve always wondered about the differing customs in scholarly publishing in the humanities versus the sciences. In the sciences (well, at least in biology [my field] and astrophysics [my daughter’s field]), it seems that the journal article is almost the exclusive form for publication of new primary research. Books and monographs are almost exclusively formats for summaries and reviews of research. On the other hand, in the humanities it seems (at least from afar) that the book is the primary mode of scholarly publication. So, two questions:
1) Is this in fact true? To what extent are journal articles used for scholarly publication in the humanities, and how do they compare with books in evaluation of scholarly productivity?
2) Any ideas why there is this difference between fields (if it in fact exist)? Is it anything more than just tradition?
Thanks,
Ben Murray
It’s a good question. In the humanities, both scholarly articles and books/monographs are important for promotion, tenure, and for getting one’s views heard. But books/monographes generally are thought of as having greater cache, at least when published by major university pressses (on the other extreme are vanity presses; and there’s a lot in between the two). Generally a book in my field that appears from Oxford University Press, Harvard University Press, Princeton University Press, etc. etc. can be trusted to have been vetted quite seriously and to have been not just peer reviewed but deemed of very high academic quality by senior scholars in the field.
Cladistics? Sounds like he was inspired by Darwinian biology!
What Bart is too modest to mention, of course, is that working with Ph.D. students entails a great deal more than “just” supervising dissertations. It means helping students prepare to actually begin their dissertation projects, sitting on exam committees for students other than those whose dissertations he’ll be advising, doing general mentoring and assisting in students’ professional development, hosting reading groups and appearing on panels … and of course writing copious amounts of recommendations for everything from fellowships to postdocs to jobs for students. It’s a boatload of work — and we really do appreciate it 🙂
What’s the career path for your Ph.D. students? Do they all head for academia, or are there other possibilities?
In virtually every instance, their goal is to teach at the college/university level. And the ones who finish the program (with all its rigors) for the most part find teaching positions. But in the current climate (cutbacks because of the economy) it’s very hard, as positions are scarce.