This post is from Stephanie Ryberg, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania. Stephanie talks about writing the literature review for her dissertation proposal. Her perspective is a good one: she is in the midst of things, and is working out how to tackle an important part of her proposal.
After finally finishing coursework, I sat down about a month ago to begin seriously writing my dissertation proposal. In our program, we have to follow a fairly standard outline in structuring our proposals (review of relevant research, problem statement, objectives, methods, approach, data sources, significance…). I was able to write my research ideas clearly and succinctly. And although I need to revise it and add some depth, my advisor’s comments on the actual proposed research were generally positive.
The “review of relevant research,” though is another story. Writing the first draft of this section presented me with three significant issues. First, I have only about four or five pages to cover all of the necessary information. Second, I am studying a relatively un-researched topic that crosses a number of bodies of scholarly literature. Last, while my dissertation is using contemporary case studies, much of the justification for the project comes from a historical analysis of various approaches to neighborhood revitalization. For the first draft, I presented this history and then reviewed and critiqued contemporary literature—going well beyond my tight length limits. My advisor’s comments were succinct: synthesize all the information—history and existing research, present it as one narrative, and do it in five pages. This is proving easier said than done.
My research is a qualitative project that combines historical analysis and methods with something mimicking a policy analysis of contemporary case studies. The research crosses a few (often disconnected) sub-fields of city planning (historic preservation, community development and organizing, neighborhood revitalization). It inevitably must also address some fairly heated issues such as gentrification. All of this creates a complicated framework, which I am sure cannot be unique to my project, and makes grounding the proposed dissertation in existing research extremely complex.
Of course I am encountering the usual issues of selecting the most important and relevant research or points of history to include. In addition, we are expected to write and revise our proposals while taking qualifying exams and submitting a journal-worthy paper (part of our program requirements). Finding time to balance all of these high-priority things and dedicate sufficient thought to each seems daunting from the outset and anxiety-inducing throughout.
My goal seems simple: use a historical narrative, combined with some of my own previous research, to show that the phenomenon I am investigating exists and then illustrate through a critical review of literature that the issue is understudied (at best) or ignored. When I try to do this, though, my writing becomes muddled and something resembling panic that I have no idea what I am doing sets in (the latter is definitely not a productive step in breaking my writing block). I have great support for my work and approach (including undertaking qualitative, humanities-based research), but continuously feel that I am taking a shot in the dark with every draft of this portion of the proposal. At the moment, I clearly have no answers to my own dilemma (except a healthy dose of “stepping away from it” procrastination). Perhaps one day—a couple of months from now—after I’ve revised and revised I will be able to look back and offer advice. But maybe not; maybe this is just one of those things we have to go through and the only solution is to just work at until it works. I guess only the coming weeks will tell…
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