Abstract
The origins of this chapter were to move from the social sciences to the humanities to understand from a different disciplinary perspective the shifting, contested nature of the doctorate both within and beyond academe. In this chapter, the views of academics and students in a Department of English are examined as regards the changing nature of the doctorate, within the discipline as well as within institutional and policy contexts. What emerged was a picture of a discipline struggling with whether and how to re-define itself in a time of dramatic changes in popular culture, publishing, institutional drivers, and the job market for English PhD graduates. It becomes obvious, as the chapter unfolds, that some issues brought students and academics together whereas they held divergent and somewhat conflicting views about other issues.
This chapter has been published in Changing Practices in Doctoral Education (Chap. 4, pp. 42–53), by D. Boud & A. Lee (Eds.) (2008), London, UK: Routledge. Copyright 2007 by Routledge. Reprinted with permission.
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Acknowledgements
We greatly thank D. Bray, M. Kilgour, P. Yachnin, Janet, Jenn, and Joel—all from English—who shared their views, read drafts, and helped ensure we came to better understand the profession. The three students wished that only their first names be used.
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McAlpine, L., Paré, A., Starke-Meyerring, D. (2011). Disciplinary Voices: A Shifting Landscape for English Doctoral Education in the Twenty-First Century. In: McAlpine, L., Amundsen, C. (eds) Doctoral Education: Research-Based Strategies for Doctoral Students, Supervisors and Administrators. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0507-4_9
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