Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 332–344

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Journal of English for Academic Purposes

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Change and stability: Examining the macrostructures of doctoral thesesin the visual and performing arts

Brian Paltridge a,*, Sue Starfield b, Louise J. Ravelli c, Kathryn Tuckwell d

a Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australiab The Learning Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australiac School of English, Media and Performing Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australiad1/46 Lackey Street, Summer Hill, NSW 2130, Australia

Keywords:Thesis and dissertation writingAcademic literaciesAcademic discourseAcademic writingEAP

* Corresponding authors.E-mail addresses: brian.paltridge@sydney.edu.au

well@gmail.com (K. Tuckwell).

1475-1585/$ – see front matter � 2012 Elsevier Ltdhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2012.08.003

a b s t r a c t

This article describes an investigation into the practice-based doctorate in the visual andperforming arts, a genre that is still in the process of development. A key feature of thesedoctorates is that they comprise two components: a visual or performance component,and a written text which accompanies it which in some ways is similar to, but in others, isquite different from a traditional doctoral dissertation. This article focuses on the overallorganizational patterns, or macrostructures of the texts that students submit as part of theexamination in these areas of study, and how these patterns of organization are related tothose found in more established examples of the doctoral dissertation genre in other areasof study. The study found that there is a range of organizational possibilities for the writtentext that is part of a doctoral submission in the visual and performing arts, each at differentpoints on a continuum. Our study shows how the genre we examined has both thecapacity for change, while remaining ‘stabilized for now’ in terms of its social action andpurpose.

� 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

This article draws on a larger study that investigates the practice-based doctorate in the visual and performing arts, a genrethat has appeared relatively recently on the academic landscape, particularly in the UK and Australia. In this article, weexamine, in particular, the organizational patterns or macrostructures (van Dijk, 1980; Gardner & Holmes, 2009) of doctoralsubmissions in the visual and performing arts. The conventional doctoral dissertation could be thought of as a genre that is, inthe words of Schryer (1994, p. 108), “stabilized-for-now”. However, with the admission to the academy, from the 1990sonwards, of areas of study such as the visual and performing arts (Buckley, 2009; Elkins, 2009), visual and performing artsstudents’ doctoral submissions have demonstrated how this genre has a capacity for change. Our article sheds light on howthe forces for change and the forces for stability play out as a high-stakes genre in non-traditional fields of academic studynegotiates its entry into the academy.

A key feature of doctoral submissions in the visual and performing arts is that they comprise two components: a visual orperformance component, and awritten text which accompanies it. This is different from conventional doctoral submissions inthat both pieces of work comprise the ‘thesis’ and both are evaluated as part of the doctoral examination process. The term‘thesis’, in the visual and performing arts, is typically used to refer to the combined work. (In this article we use the term

(B. Paltridge), s.starfield@unsw.edu.au (S. Starfield), l.ravelli@unsw.edu.au (L.J. Ravelli), kathryn.tuck-

. All rights reserved.

B. Paltridge et al. / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 332–344 333

‘thesis’ to refer to the students’ creative work and their written text, as a whole. We use the term ‘dissertation’ to refer todoctoral submissions in general; that is, conventional, or traditional doctoral dissertations in areas of study where doctoralsubmissions are much more stabilized than they appear to be in the visual and performing arts.) For further discussion of therelations between the creative and written components in the visual and performing arts doctoral thesis, see Ravelli et al.(in press).

2. Background to the study

Doctoral degrees in the visual and performing arts have been offered by Australian universities since the 1980s. Thenumber of universities offering these degrees has increased in recent years as a result of art schools and colleges beingmergedwith universities. Prior to this, the terminal degree offered at art schools was the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in which studentswere expected to write a shorter written text, commonly known as the exegesis, that accompanied the creative work(Paltridge 2004). Now part of the university, these new communities and their members have had to conform to “thescholarly expectations of the university as a whole” (Johns & Swales, 2002, p. 17). Original research and scholarship in thevisual and performing arts has now become amajor concern for the institutions and for people working in these areas (Evans,Macauley, Pearson, & Tregenza, 2003). One of the ways in which this has been addressed is through the introduction ofdoctoral degrees in these areas of study (see Paltridge et al., 2011, 2013 for further discussion of this).

The official university regulations as to the format these texts should take, while varying from institution to institution,have in common that they clearly specify the relationship between the written component and the creative practicecomponent in terms of a percentage weighting to be agreed upon between the candidate and the supervisor. The 2010Postgraduate Research Student Handbook of the Creative Industries Faculty of the Queensland University of Technology (2010),for example, specifies that “The weighting for the practice component shall be between 40% and 75% of the whole study” (p.30) and that the PhD requires a minimumword length for the written component of 20,000 words which is considered equalto 25% of 80,000 words [the length of the ‘typical’ PhD dissertation]. The emphasis on negotiated weighting underlying therelationship between the two components indexes a complex and often impassioned debate over how the university as aninstitution accommodates creative work into its canons. In the course of our study, the question was often posed as towhether there needed to be any kind of written component at all. Could the creative work on its own not embody the originalcontribution to knowledge required for doctoral work and also acknowledge previous work that had influenced its genesis? Asenior member of the visual and performing arts academic community articulated this somewhat provocative view thus:“research outputs and claims to knowledge [should] be reported through symbolic language and forms specific to theirpractice” (emphasis in the original) – “amove [that] challenges traditional ways of research reporting” that need not be boundby “words or numbers” (Haseman, 2007, p. 148). Similar views have been expressed in the UK where authors such as Candlin(2000) and Thompson (2005) have criticized the development of the PhD in these areas, especially in relation to its textualfocus (Borg, 2007a).

At present, 29 Australian universities offer doctoral degrees in these areas of study. In 2008 (the most recent figuresavailable), 1779 students were enrolled in doctoral studies in the visual and performing arts in Australian universities. In theearlier years, and to some extent still today, many of the students undertaking these degrees were experienced artistsreturning to do a PhD after 15 or 20 years away from study. Expectations for these students, then, are high and the quality ofthe text they produce as part of their examinable output is crucial to their success. There are, however, few descriptions in theliterature as to what the texts these students write should look like, nor any cross-university studies which have examinedthese texts in detail.

While there has been some research into the overall organizational structures of more traditional doctoral dissertations inthe research literature (see Previous research on dissertation macrostructures below), very little attention has been given tothe texts that doctoral students write in the visual and performing arts. The focus of this article, then, is on the overallorganizational structures of the written texts that students submit as part of their examination in these areas of study andhow these patterns of organization are related to those found inmore established examples of the doctoral dissertation genre,in other areas of study.

Clearly, a genre is more than its form (Miller, 1984). The forms that genres take do, however, matter (Devitt, 2009). The aimof our study has been to find out what are some of the ‘forms that matter’ for doctoral students in the visual and performingarts. A key factor in this lies in the notion of prototype (Rosch, 1977, 1983; Rosch & Mervis, 1975; Taylor, 1995). That is, theremay be typical ways in which genres are organized at the discourse level, typical situations in which they occur, and typicalthings they ‘aim to do’. It is not always the case, however, that these will necessarily be the same in every instance, even if allthe texts are considered successful instances of the same genre (see Paltridge, 1995, 1997; Swales, 1990, 2004, for furtherdiscussion of this). As Borg (2007b) argues, there is always a tension between convention and innovation in doctoral writingin the visual arts. Innovation, he argues, is central to areas of study such as these and will necessarily be reflected in the textsthat students write.

3. Methodology for the study

Johns and Swales (2002, p. 17) argue that several layers of context “shape the construction and creation of a particularinstance of the [doctoral dissertation] genre”. These include the “scholarly expectation of the university as a whole as ratified

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by its official forms and procedures”, the constraints and opportunities that are provided by disciplinary expectations andwhat are considered to be appropriate topics, and claims for novelty and innovation. Also included in this are the specificmethodologies used and the rhetorical options that students have explored. This all takes placewithin the “situated localities”of, for example, advisor–advisee relationships and the support networks that are available to students (see also Ridley, 2003).

In order to better understand the ways in which these multiple contexts shape the written component of doctoralsubmissions in the visual and performing arts, our study adopted a textographic approach (Swales, 1998a, 1998b) as itsresearch methodology. Textography is an approach to the analysis of written texts which combines text analysis withethnographic techniques such as surveys, interviews and other data sources in order to examine what texts are like, and why.It aims to get an inside viewof theworlds inwhich the texts arewritten, why the texts arewritten as they are, what guides thewriting, and the values that underlie the texts that have been written. In using this methodology, our aim was to providea more situated and contextualized basis for understanding doctoral students’writing thanmight be obtained by just lookingat students’ texts alone. In doing this, we aimed to uncover “what can and cannot be said and done” (Bawarshi, 2006, p. 244)within the particular genre as well as a way of advising doctoral students as to what counts as ‘best examples’ of doctoralwriting in these areas of study.

While this paper does not report on some of the additional insights provided by this approach, it is important to emphasisethat it is this approach which enabled us to identify the relevant data set to commence with. Despite the ready availability oftheses online, it was nevertheless difficult to identify relevant exemplars, and evenmore difficult to understand the full scopeof these particularly complex theses. For example, in the case of one thesis, Haley’s (2005) Mirror as Metasign (referred tobelow), the written component made no explicit reference to an accompanying creative work, which was nevertheless a keycomponent of the overall thesis. It was only through the textography that we were made aware of this. It is also important toadd that textography presumes, and does not exclude, other forms of analysis, and we have drawn heavily on genre anddiscourse analysis also in the broader study.

Additionally, we focused on successfully-examined doctoral theses, particularly those that were strongly recommended tous, as we wanted to examine what are considered by the field to be ‘best examples’ of these texts. We felt these would beappropriate to use for making pedagogical recommendations to students working in these particular fields. It might bepossible also to examine draft theses, or rejected theses, for what they reveal about what does and does not count as ‘success’in this field, but this was not the focus of our study.

4. Data collected for the study

The first stage of the project established a database of institutions, their doctoral programs, assessment regimes andnumbers of recent graduates to determine the extent to which practice-based doctoral submissions are taking place inAustralia in the visual and performing arts. Some of this data is reported on in the introductory section to this article.

An online survey was then developed with a specific focus on doctoral supervision of practice-based theses. An email witha link to the survey was sent to 150 academics in the visual and performing arts in Australian universities. Initial questionsincluded the participants’ experience of doctoral supervision, the fields of study covered, and characteristics of the exami-nation process. Subsequent questions focused on the written component and asked specifically about the relationshipbetween the written and creative components; the typical length of the written component; the typical organization of thewritten component; the characteristics of high quality doctoral work in the specific area of study; the nature of universityguidelines in relation to practice-based submissions; how a significant contribution to knowledge could be demonstrated inthe specific field of study and, finally, what students typically found most straightforward and most challenging about theirdoctoral writing. Responses to the survey were received from 32 supervisors of doctoral level students, a 20 percent responserate. Respondents were also asked to indicate if they would be prepared to be interviewed and to identify doctoral theses thatthey considered to be examples of a high quality doctoral project in their field.

Based on these recommendations, the next stage of the project involved the collection of doctoral texts (that is, thewrittencomponents). Thirty-six doctoral texts, each ranging from 50 to 80,000 words in length were collected. The areas of studycovered by the texts are summarized in Table 1. As can be seen from this Table, there were more visual arts than performingarts texts which is generally reflective of enrolments in doctoral study across these two general areas of study.

All those who indicated that they would be available for interview were contacted which led to 15 students and 15supervisors being interviewed. In the majority of cases, we were able to interview both the supervisor and the student of the

Table 1Areas of study in the sample texts.

Visual arts Performing arts

Painting 7 Dance 6Mixed media 5 Theatre 1Drawing 2 Music 3Digital media 8Photography 2Sculpture 2

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recommended thesis. Two examiners of theses in these fields who had responded to the survey and recommended thesesthey considered outstanding examples of doctoral work were interviewed as well. Each interview lasted approximately 1 hand was carried out by two of the authors. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed and then analyzed and codedusing NVIVO 8 enabling themes to be identified and cross-referenced. Prior to each interview, the researchers read thewritten component of the student’s submission and, where available, viewed a DVD recording of the performance or CD of theimages from the exhibition. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were carried out based on the interview schedules inAppendix A. The questions covered some of the areas examined in the online supervisor survey but face-to-face interviewingallowed for probing and clarifying as well as for discussion of the student’s written text and its relationship to the thesis asawhole. Student interviews followed a similar schedule but focusedmore on understanding the student’s choice of particularorganizational patterns in the written component and the relationship between the two components of the thesis. Questionsalso asked about the student’s use of guidelines or models in shaping their written component.

We also examined university prospectuses and information given to students in relation to their candidature, some ofwhich were collected in our initial scoping of the field referred to above and are reported on in the introduction to this article.We obtained copies of in-house art school publications and discussion papers as well as attended roundtable discussions andexhibition openings of doctoral students’ work. These differing texts and events were crucial for deepening our under-standing of the concerns of the fields under study.

In this article, we discuss our analysis of the overall macrostructures of the 36 doctoral texts that were collected. Asindicated in Table 1, these doctoral texts were in the areas of theatre, dance, music, painting, sculpture, drawing, digital mediaand mixed media. The texts were analyzed to see to what extent there were typical organizational patterns across the textsand in what ways these patterns might be similar to more conventional doctoral dissertation macrostructures. Of course,there is a sense in which the more conventional macrostructures are being used as a kind of implicit ‘benchmark’. However,the intention is not that the macrostructures of theses in other fields either will or should be the same in our sets of texts, butthat this gives us a basis for understanding what is, or might be, going on in these theses. The written components of thetheses in our data set are often extremely unusual in form, in comparison with the structures that are more familiar to theacademy, and therefore, some starting point for the analysis was necessary. At the same time, by using the more traditionalmacro-structures as a point of reference, we can also reflect on the extent towhich the texts we examinedwere influenced by,and reflective of, more traditional thesis types. Indeed the comments made by the supervisors in the interviews we held withthem, suggested that for some, this was, in fact, the case.

5. Examples of doctoral works in the visual and performing arts

While there is not space here to fully elaborate the details of all the theses in our data set, it is relevant to highlight twoexamples, to illustrate the originality and novelty of these theses as doctoral research projects. Two examples of doctoralworks in the visual and performing arts are Haley’s (2005) Mirror as metasign: Contemporary culture as mirror world andFenton’s (2007) UnstableActs: A practitioner’s case study of the poetics of postdramatic theatre and intermediality.1 The creativecomponent of Haley’s PhD was an exhibition titled After Reflectionwhich was made up of oil paintings, light jet photographson Perspex, and two projected works, including a large 3D animation that is projected onto two walls. A scene from hisexhibition is shown in Fig.1, where a visitor is looking at the projected artworks. Thewritten component of the doctoral thesiswas an analysis and critique of the mirror in western visual arts practice, from the Renaissance to the present day. Haley’swritten component is somewhat parallel to his creative project and contains very little reference to the exhibitionwhich waspart of his doctoral work.

Fenton’s (2007) doctoral project explores the practice and poetics of postdramatic theatre, or what is elsewhere known as‘performance art’. Fenton’s creative work was a cycle of theatrical development, culminating in a final performance. Hedeveloped his creative work in collaboration with a number of performers as well as theatre practitioners with expertise inlighting, theatre design, audiovisual techniques, and so on. Thus his ‘creative work’was not just the final performance but theprocess of collaborationwhich led up to it. An image from one of Fenton’s performances is shown in Fig. 2. Thewritten text hesubmitted as part of his examination describes, as well as theorizes, the development of his project and contains numerousreferences to and images of the collaborative creative work. As a result, the creative and the written components of hisdoctoral submission are more obviously linked together than they are in Haley’s work.

6. Previous research on dissertation macrostructures

Dong (1998), Dudley-Evans (1999), Paltridge (2002), Paltridge & Starfield (2007), Starfield & Ravelli (2006), Ridley (2000,2003) and Thompson (1999) have described typical discourse structures of dissertations written in English. Three dissertationtypes that have emerged in these analyses are ‘simple traditional’, ‘complex traditional’, and ‘topic-based’ dissertations. Adissertation with a ‘simple’ traditional pattern is one which reports on a single study and has a typical macrostructure of‘introduction’, ‘review of the literature’, ‘materials and methods’, ‘results’, ‘discussion’, and ‘conclusion’; that is, an Intro-duction–Methods–Results–Discussion (IMRD) dissertation. A dissertation with a ‘complex’ internal structure is one which

1 Spelling and punctuation of thesis titles are as in original copies of the theses. Typography is not reproduced.

Fig. 1. A scene from the Mirror as Metasign exhibition (Haley, 2005).

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reports on more than one study. It typically commences with ‘introduction’ and ‘review of the literature’ sections, as with thesimple traditional dissertation. It might then have a ‘general methods’ section which is followed by a series of sections whichreport on each of the individual studies. The dissertation concludes with a general overall conclusions section. In the ‘complextraditional’ type of dissertation, the ‘materials and methods’ section is in parentheses in Table 2 to indicate that this infor-mation may be common to all of the individual studies, and therefore presented as a general chapter before the individualstudies; otherwise the chapters on the individual studies will include individual sections onmaterials andmethods, as well ason the results, discussion and conclusions, relating to the individual studies. A ‘topic-based’ dissertation typically commenceswith an introductory chapter which is then followed by a series of chapters which have titles based on sub-topics of the topicunder investigation. The dissertation then ends with a ‘conclusions’ chapter. The main features of these three categories aresummarized in Table 2.

Fig. 2. A performer in UnstableActs (Fenton, 2007).

Table 2Main categories of dissertation macrostructures (adapted from Paltridge, 2002).

Simple conventional Complex conventional Topic-based

Reports on a single empirical study Reports on several empirical studies Explores different aspects of a topicMacrostructure:� Introduction� Review of literature� Materials & methods� Results� Discussion� Conclusions

Macrostructure:� Introduction� Review of literature� (Materials & methods)� Study 1� Study 2� Study 3 (etc.)� General/overall conclusions

Macrostructure:� Introduction� Topic 1� Topic 2� Topic 3 (etc.)� Conclusions

B. Paltridge et al. / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 332–344 337

7. Results of the study

As can be seen in Table 2, the ‘simple’ traditional and the ‘complex’ traditional dissertation structures are oriented towardsresearch that involves some kind of empirical study. This might lead one to hypothesize that these structures are unlikely tobe found in a visual or performing arts doctoral text where empirical research is not carried out in the same way as it is inother areas of study. However, an initial survey of the texts that we collected only partially confirmed this hypothesis, in thatwhilemost would seem to be topic-based, quite a few appear to be some kind ofmixture of simple traditional and topic-baseddissertation types. Table 3 shows the chapter headings of two typical texts that display these two patterns, while Table 4provides an overview of the distributions of macrostructural types in the entire corpus.

Van Niele’s (2005) topic-based doctoral text, Ambivalent belonging, was a reflection on the student’s experiences of beingamigrant in Australia. Her text included artworks such as drawings and artifacts such asmaps, knitting and documentation ofa walking project plus 160 small original drawings interleaved between paragraphs of the text. Her chapters are described asa ‘mapping of journeys’ with each following a particular topic related to her overall theme. The only conventional aspects toher topic-based text are an Introduction where she lays out the groundwork for her study and a Conclusion where she drawsthe threads of her chapters together.

Fenton’s (2007) mixture of a simple traditional and a topic-based text theorizes his creative work as well as describes thecycles of the performance work that he and his colleagues created. The fact that Fenton (2007) uses some but not all of thechapter headings one expects to find in a simple traditional dissertation leads to the further hypothesis that the remainingchapters, although having more ‘topic-like’ headings, might in fact correspond to the ‘missing’ traditional simple headings,and this in fact is roughly the case. Fenton’s text is one which examines the author-artist’s praxis in some detail, as hecollaborates with various theatre practitioners on several cycles of performance that he uses to investigate the notion ofpostdramatic theatre. Chapter 4 of his text outlines the way that documenting and reflecting on each cycle of performancelead to changes in the next cycle, and Chapter 5 presents Fenton’s theory of postdramatic theatre based on his findings.

Fenton’s text, then, makes it clear that for some author-artists, the creation of an artistic work and/or an investigation ofthe process of doing so (or of one’s artistic practice generally) constitutes a kind of empirical study. This finding made itnecessary to review the other apparently ‘topic-based’ texts, to work out whether more detailed analogies could be drawnbetween the components of the visual and performing arts doctoral texts and the components of a simple traditionaldissertation.

8. Distribution of macrostructure types in the visual and performing arts doctoral texts

The analogies referred to above meant that although most of the texts in our data set might, at a glance, be categorised astopic-based (or as a mixture of simple traditional and topic-based structures), after further investigation it was possible to

Table 3Chapter headings from two texts displaying the most typical patterns in the visual and performing arts doctoral texts.

Topic-based Mixed simple traditional and topic-based

Ambivalent belonging (van Niele, 2005) UnstableActs: A practitioner’s case study of the poetics of postdramatic theatre and intermediality (Fenton, 2007)Chapters:Introduction1. Far from solid2. Merged memories3. Emotional geographies4. Wandering wordsConclusion: Chora

Chapters:1. Introduction2. Literature review3. Methodology4. A summary of the studies5. The stylistic qualities of postdramatic theatre and intermediality6. The poetics of postdramatic theatre: findings and conclusion

Table 4The distribution of macrostructure types in the visual and performing arts doctoraltexts.

Category of macrostructure Number of texts (n ¼ 36)

Topic-based 18Simple traditional 17Complex traditional 1

B. Paltridge et al. / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 332–344338

classify nearly half of the set (18 texts) as having (close to) a ‘traditional’ macrostructure, with 17 of these being ‘simpletraditional’ and one being closer to ‘complex traditional’, since it reports on three creative projects rather than just one. Thefigures for the three main categories of macrostructure are given in Table 4.

It is worth noting here that there is a fourth category of macrostructure discussed by Paltridge (2002) which was relativelyuncommon in Australian universities at the time he carried out his study, a dissertation which comprises of a number ofalready-published research articles. While there are no texts in our data set that fall into this category, there were several (e.g.Oscar’s 2007 Into this wild abyss: Learning through fabricated photographs) which included a list of publications based on thestudent’s research in their end-matter, indicating that there is potential for this option to be used by candidates in the visualand performing arts as well.

9. Examples of traditional simple visual and performing arts doctoral texts

As we have pointed out, it is apparent that for some author-artists, the creation of an artistic work and/or an investigationof this process constitutes a kind of empirical study. Understanding this makes it possible to see the structure of many of theapparently topic-based texts amongst our data set as being (analogous to, at least) ‘simple traditional’ dissertation structures.Tables 5 and 6 give details of two further texts, including summaries of chapter contents, to show how these apparently topic-based texts in fact follow a very similar trajectory to simple traditional dissertations.

In the texts outlined in Tables 5 and 6, as in most of the ones in our data set that have been classified as having a ‘simpletraditional’ structure, one or more of the later chapters (e.g. the last or second-last chapter before the Conclusion) discussesthe author-artist’s ownwork. These discussions are typically not simply a description or presentation of the examined work.Rather, they tend to be highly theorised discussions, that represent a kind of culmination of the argument to that point,drawing together the theories and artworks previously discussed and showing how the author-artist’s work representsa further point in the trajectory through the art world that has been outlined by the student’s text. If one considers, asdiscussed above in relation to Fenton’s work (see Table 3), that many of the author-artists in our investigation see theirartworks and/or their praxis as a kind of experiment, then these culminating chapters can be seen as roughly equivalent to theResults and Discussion sections of a simple traditional thesis.

With this in mind, it is then possible to see that for an artist, a discussion of artistic, critical or theoretical influences, and ofartistic works, movements or practitioners that relate to their ownwork, constitutes something similar to the Review of theliterature in a ‘simple traditional’ thesis. In a conventional thesis, the Review of the literature allows candidates to both showtheir knowledge of others’work in a particular field, and indicate that their ownwork is legitimate and valuable because it fitsinto an established field, while laying the groundwork for showing, in later sections, how their research is unique, innovativeand progressive within that field. Similarly, a ‘Review of art’ allows candidates to show where and how their art, and theirways of thinking about their art, fit into the art world generally. At least one candidate in our data set notes this analogy in hertext, saying that she had built ‘a pictorial database’ of influences that might be thought of as a ‘pictorial literature review’

(Baker, 2004, Painting: A new critical voice – Serious pleasure, pp. 9–14) in her text.

Table 5Simple traditional visual arts doctoral texts – an example: The after-party: The retreat and concealment of strategic appropriation in contemporary art (Lowry,2003).

Chapter headings Summary of chapter contents

IntroductionCh 1: The evolution of the strategy of appropriation in the

visual artsHistorical background: history of the use of appropriation in the visual arts

Ch 2: Incentives for retreat and concealment Theoretical discussion of appropriation, copyright issues, etc.Ch 3: Appropriation and the construction of postmodern

subjectivityDiscussion of appropriation in a ‘local’ context – case studies of threeAustralian artists

Ch 4: Strategies of concealment in contemporary art andpopular culture

Discussion of the central topic of the doctoral work, using examplesfrom the author-artist’s own works and others’ works

Ch 5: ‘As if’: art after appropriation and the ‘agnostic’ model Further discussion of theoretical issues, looking to the futureConclusion

Table 6Traditional simple performing arts doctoral texts – an example: African heart, Eastern mind: The transcendent experience through improvised music (Vincs,2002).

Chapter headings Summary of chapter contents

IntroductionCh 1: Transcendence Explanation of what the author means by ‘transcendent experience’Ch 2: Methodology Traditional Western musicological practice tends to work against knowledge of transcendence; documents the author-artist’s

process of reasoningCh 3: Contextualisation Direct influences on author-artist as an improviser of music; relationships to other local improvisersCh 4: Forces Theory: Nietzschean concepts reinterpreted through an Eastern perspective on complementaritiesCh 5: My mode of

existenceExploration of author’s own music/practice (in relation to the notion of transcendent experience)

Ch 6: Musical processesConclusion

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Most of the texts in our data set included the usual Introduction and Conclusion chapters, serving the same function asthose components in conventional dissertations. Together with the equivalences in several other components just discussed,it is now possible to see a reasonable analogy between the traditional dissertation macrostructures and the structure of manyof the visual and performing arts texts in our data, as shown in Table 7.

Some of the texts, further, do in fact include some kind of ‘Methodology’ section, which may be a separate chapter namedas such as in Fenton (see Table 3) or Vincs (see Table 6). In other texts, methodology appears under a different name and/or asa subsection of another chapter. For example, Berridge (2006), whose text Re-picturing my life is otherwise topic-based, hasa chapter called ‘Process’ that is basically an account of her methodology. In Dearman’s (2008) Art practice and gov-ernmentality: The role modelling effects of contemporary art practice and its institutions the ‘Introduction’ chapter includes thesubsections called ‘Method: Writing a studio’, ‘Methodology’ and ‘Governmentality as methodology’; while in Donald’s(2008) Reflective space: A personal journey towards a re-envisioning of the Australian landscape the second chapter includesthe subsections ‘Methods’ and ‘Research methodology’.

These methodology chapters and sections, as well as being variable in their placement and naming, are also quite variablein their content. A few author-artists give details of the physical materials and processes used in the construction of theirworks, in the sameway that a chemist or physicist might in relation to a laboratory experiment. However, most methodologysections tend to be more about the conceptual methodology – the principles or theoretical framework the author-artist hasused either to construct the work, or to interrogate their own praxis. Since these ‘conceptual materials’ are typically drawnfrom the work of other artists and cultural critics, there is a lot of overlap between this material and the contents of what hasbeen described above as ‘review of art’ sections – and in fact, in many of the texts, there was no designated or separate‘methodology’ section at all, and the ‘review of art’ chapter(s) might be taken to be serving both as a ‘review of literature’ andas a ‘methodology’.

Thus, in many of the visual and performing arts doctoral texts that we examined we see components that match those ofa conventional doctoral dissertation, and in approximately the same order; but the components are typically much lessdiscretely divided or specifically named, so there may be three chapters of ‘review of art’ that have topic-based headings, andacross these three chapters we will see elements corresponding to both review of literature and to methodology. Similarlythere may be one or more chapters that describe and/or critique and theorise the author-artists’ creative work, where theconventional elements ‘Results’ and ‘Discussion’ are intermingled. Table 8 showswhat seems to us to be a typical structure for‘traditional’ visual and performing arts doctoral texts.

10. Topic-based visual and performing arts doctoral texts

As was noted above, at first glance, the majority of the 36 texts in our data set appeared to fall into the ‘topic-based’category. That is to say, a majority of the texts have chapter headings that (apart from the Introduction and Conclusion) do notindicate the presence of the components of conventional doctoral dissertation structures. As we have discussed, the fact thatsome of the texts had chapter headings that appeared to be a mixture of traditional and topic-based (as with Fenton, 2007),whose chapter headings include a Literature Review and a Methodology section, but not Results or Discussion sections led to

Table 7Analogies between components of traditional and visual and performing arts doctoral texts.

Simple traditional dissertations Visual and performing arts doctoral texts

Introduction IntroductionReview of literature Review of artMaterials & methods Process of making the art or the theoretical framework the author-artist has used to construct their

work or to interrogate their praxisResults Examined work of art itself, and/or some representation or description of itDiscussion Critical discussion of the author’s workConclusion Conclusion

Table 8Typical structure of ‘traditional’ visual and performing arts doctoral texts.

Simple traditional dissertations Visual and performing arts doctoral texts

Introduction IntroductionReview of literature/methodology Review of art (one or more chapters)Results/discussion Art description/critique (one or more chapters)Conclusion Conclusion

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a further investigation of the apparently topic-based chapters, to see whether these were actually serving the function ofconventional components, and this was in fact found to be the case. In other words, despite the topic-based chapter titles, atleast half of the texts (see Table 4) followed a roughly analogous trajectory to a conventional dissertation structure, albeit withsome dispersal and intermingling of components.

However, this still left 18 texts in our set which are clearly successful instances of the genre ‘visual and performing artsdoctoral text’, but for which the structural description ‘topic based’ provides limited guidance as to the components that arenecessary for success or how these components should be organised. As with the data set as a whole, there was a lot ofapparent variation amongst these 18 texts, but it was possible to make some assertions about the features that these textsseem to have in common, not just with each other but with the rest of the data set and with successful doctoral dissertationsin other areas of study.

Armed with the knowledge that visual and performing arts doctoral texts may include the same components asa conventional doctoral dissertation, but in more dispersed forms, the 18 topic-based texts were further reviewed. The firstfinding of this analysis was that in all but one of the 18 topic-based texts the opening chapters have a title that performs somekind of ‘introducing’ function. In most cases this chapter is called ‘Introduction’ (and in a few cases this is preceded bya chapter called ‘Preface’ or ‘Prelude’), but the other titles are similarly indicative of the chapter’s function, e.g. ‘Preliminaries’(Berridge, 2006) and ‘Introducing the Transit Zone’ (Laing, 2009). Similarly, all but a few of the 18 texts have a final chapterthat was either titled as or functioned as a Conclusion, or included a final sectionwith this function. Although the presence ofIntroduction and Conclusion components was typical in this set, andmost peoplewho are familiar with conventional doctoraldissertations would think of them as an obligatory feature of any dissertation-length piece of writing, that which functions asan Introduction or Conclusion can be very different from that which is typical, or conventional, for these kinds of texts.

Two texts which exploit these components are Sabadini’s (2007) Exquisite corpse: The rainbow serpent in the Garden of Edenwhich has an atypical Introduction, and Baker’s (2004) Painting: A new critical voice – Serious pleasure which has an atypicalConclusion. These two texts are significant, as they seem to represent the endpoint, in our data at least, of a continuumbetween very conventional doctoral texts with discrete components in a fixed order, and doctoral texts that are relativelyunstructured. Sabadini’s opening chapter is titled ‘Gardening: An album of sites’. In this chapter she presents images of hermother’s garden and describes it, and her experiences of being in it, as a way of laying the ground for her doctoral work.Mostly the chapter appears to be straightforward recount: “My mother’s garden in Dianella has a lemon tree at the edge of theback patio (p. 2).. My father started this garden but he died a year after we moved in (p. 3). I have a habit of sitting on the backstep (p. 6).” Interspersed with this are small moments of reflection: “Enclosure and connection are important senses I relate toin both the works and in the photographs (p. 6) . The invisible thing I want from gardens has not been constant (p. 8) . what Ithink is familiar and known is also not authentically itself (p. 11) .”. At the same time, there are moments where the authormakes explicit connection between her mother’s garden, the author’s paintings of it, and the doctoral project: “Through thejourney of this doctoral project I began to see, or desire, differently (p. 9) . it is difficult to write about such things in a doctoralexegesis (p. 11).What I have tried to do in this project along with many other post-modern humanities researchers is to feel for thecrossing over that must occur in contemporary life between worlds (p. 15) .”. Explicit connections to theory are confined tofootnotes, although these are elaborate and complex. In this opening chapter then, the ‘research territory’ and the ‘gap’ to befilled can be seen to be established only analogously with conventional practice: it is the territory of her quest, of self-understanding through her artistic practice, which is both the territory and the gap. In other words, this apparentlydescriptive, narrative-style retelling of her experiences of ‘garden’ does function to introduce and contextualize the research,in a way that is analogous to conventional practice, albeit based on considerably different terms (i.e. personal experience).

Baker’s final chapter is titled ‘To be continued’ where she discusses beauty, pleasure and aesthetics in painting, beforecoming to her argument that the enjoyment of making and looking at painting is a serious pleasure, the title of her doctoralwork. As with Sabadini, however, the conventionally-expected components of re-stating the purpose of the study, providinga summary of the findings, or referring to the contribution the project makes to the field as a whole can be seen only beapplying a generous analogous lens. Baker’s final chapter begins by asking a question which perhaps underlies all the othersalready posed in her thesis, that is, “. why paint?” The fundamental aim of the doctoral project has been to explore “. thecritical conditions for a contemporary painting practice”, and while this chapter has no neat summary of the key points made inthe thesis, it revisits, and answers, the primary question in relation to critical lenses on art, especially in relation to differencesbetweenmodern and postmodern periods. The contributions of the thesis as awhole are also addressed in the final chapter, ina number of ways. For example, it reflects on the creative works of the doctoral project, in terms of how they function as “thepainterly articulation of these [critical] contradictions.” She also addresses how forms of critical intervention might proceed in

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the contemporary world, and thusmarks her own art and other art practice as socially significant, notmerely personal quests.Thus, the overall contribution of the thesis is reflected upon, a typical function of the conclusion, even though in formal termsthere are few evident comparisons.

Table 9 summarises the dispersal of simple traditional dissertation components throughout the texts that we examined,showing the range of macrostructure types from traditional simple type texts tomore topic-based texts where the apparently‘topic-based’ chapters, taken as a whole, fulfil the essential functions of the ‘traditional’ chapters. That is, the topic-basedchapters still locate the student’s work in a field of study, provide a description of the student’s overall project, and makeobservations about the work that show how it moves the field of study forward, but not in the way that a traditional simpletext would. In the case of the ‘topic-based’ text referred to in Table 3 (Ambivalent belonging by Irmina van Niele, 2005), thestudent places her work within the areas or migration, multiculturalism and urban geography. She then describes herexperiences as a migrant and presents artworks through which she explores the theme of belonging. She concludes her textby arguing for the notion of ‘ambivalent belonging’ as a way of responding to the migration experience. In doing this, shemakes important contributions to the fields of migration studies and multiculturalism, human and urban geography and, ofcourse, the visual arts.

11. Implications of the study

Our study highlights how genre change (Berkenkotter, 2007; Devitt, 2004) can be understood as the ‘stabilized fornow’ outcome of complex institutional negotiations – the centripetal forces for unification and hierarchy interactingdynamically with the centrifugal forces for change (Bakhtin, 1981) that play out through the academy as communitiesand their members discursively position themselves within new contexts of production and reception. While in thenovel, as Bakhtin argued, centrifugal forces are dominant, within the University, as we have argued, centripetal forcestend to hold sway.

The main centripetal force at stake here is the underlying functions of a doctoral thesis, such as the need tocontextualize the research, the need to engage with theory, the need to place the research within a broader field, and theneed to demonstrate the way/s in which the doctoral project moves the field forward. We found that while there wasconsiderable variation in how the doctoral texts we examined were organized, they were still influenced by these ex-pected requirements of doctoral dissertations. Some students achieved this by drawing on a conventional dissertationstructure of Introduction, Review of the Literature, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusion. Often, however, theytook these categories and re-conceptualized them in a way that better fits their area of study and particular project andthat might not be immediately recognizable as examples of the typical elements that make up the typical macro-structure of a more conventional doctoral dissertation. For example, the review of the literature may be a review ofa particular artist’s work, or a review of particular ways of conceptualizing art practice. The written text might also bea parallel discussion to the visual project which provides an intellectual accompaniment to the work rather than anexplanation of the work.

The results of our study are similar in some ways, but not the same as, those of Hamilton and Jaaniste (2010) whoexamined masters and doctoral submissions in the visual arts, creative writing, film, contemporary performance, dance,music and interactive media at a single institution in Australia. They found that typical features of the texts they examinedwere an explanation of key concepts that relate to the students’ research and practice, an examination of previous work that isrelevant to the students’ own project, and a description of the student’s creative process including their methods andmethodology, as well as a description of the student’s creative work. As can be seen from our discussion above, not all of thetexts we examined contained all these features and, indeed, in the case of some (e.g. Haley, 2005), there was no reference tothe student’s research process, and barely any reference to the student’s work, at all. Hamilton and Jaaniste also foundinstances of this in their data set, but call these texts “outliers” (p. 35). We prefer not to do this as this may suggest there isa standard, or conventional, way inwhich students’ texts should be organized in these areas of study, something our study hasnot revealed. Hamilton and Jaaniste’s study also reveals other centripetal forces, including institutional preferences forappropriate ways of producing doctoral theses in these fields, and disciplinary preferences for the same. These latter forcesare beyond the scope of the current paper, however, though they clearly merit further examination, as Johns and Swales haveidentified (2002).

Table 9Dispersal of conventional components of doctoral theses.

Traditional: simple Moderately dispersed Very dispersed

Introduction Introduction Analogous introductionReview of literature Review of art (one or more chapters) A number of apparently ‘topic-based’ chapters that nevertheless, taken as

a whole, fulfil the essential functions of the conventional chaptersMaterials & methodsResults Art description/critique (one or more chapters)DiscussionConclusion Conclusion Analogous conclusion

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From a practical point of view, our study has revealed that there is a range of options for how studentsmight organize theirtexts in visual and performing arts doctorates but that they still need, in some way, to address the broader issues of what it isthat characterizes successful doctoral writing. Notwithstanding this variation, the texts we examined are all examples ofsuccessful doctoral texts having all met the criteria set by universities for the examination of doctoral dissertations. Our study,then, offers insights into discourse practices in visual and performing arts doctoral writing as well as contributing to thebroader areas of genre studies and advanced academic literacies research. It necessarily focuses on form as a starting point,using that as a springboard to help understand data which is often truly innovative. Our study also helps demystify doctoralwriting in these areas in a way that is useful to both students and their supervisors that draws to their attention new andemerging discursive strategies in doctoral writing in the academy.

Some of the texts we examined, if subjected to ‘defining features’ criteria, might not be considered examples ofsuccessful doctoral dissertations when matched against doctoral dissertations in other areas of study, when very clearlythey are. The study, then, shows that innovative doctoral theses can be related to, but do not necessarily conform with,conventional doctoral writing practices. There are thus pedagogical implications for those working with doctoralcandidates in these fields, and something as simple as examining successful examples of doctoral texts in these areas ofstudy can be a liberating experience for candidates in the process of writing the text that is part of their doctoralsubmission (Starfield et al., 2012). That has certainly been the informal feedback we have received from studentsattending our presentations on doctoral writing in these fields, in particular, the value of understanding that there aremultiple and valid options for presenting their work, and that it does not necessarily have to fit a pre-conceivedtemplate, or indeed ‘straight-jacket’, for this kind of writing.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Australian Research Council for funding the study upon which this article is based.

Appendix A

Interview questions: supervisors

1. How many students are you supervising/have you supervised in creative or performing arts doctoral degrees?2. What are the main area/s of study in which you are supervising/have supervised for these degrees?3. How are doctoral theses assessed in your area of study?4. What is the role of a doctoral thesis in your area of study?5. What are the expectations and conventions for a doctoral thesis in your area of study?6. How would you describe the relationship between the thesis and other parts of the student’s work?7. What, in your view, are features of high quality doctoral theses in your area of study?8. What, in your view, are features of poor quality doctoral theses in your area of study?9. What do students find most challenging about writing a doctoral thesis in your area of study?

10. What do students find most straightforward about writing a doctoral thesis in your area of study?11. Can the creative project stand as researchwithout a supporting written text? (something that interrogates the endpoint/s

of the research as writing/research as creative practice continuum)

Interview questions: students

1. What are the expectations and conventions for a doctorate/PhD in your area of study?2. What, in your view, are features of high quality doctoral theses in your area of study?3. What did you find most challenging about producing the written component of your doctorate?4. What did you find most straightforward about producing the written component of your doctorate?5. Were you given any guidelines about what the written component should look like? Did you use any ‘models’ i.e. look at

other practice-led doctorates?6. Why did you organize your text the way you did?7. How would you describe the relationship between the written text and the creative project in your doctoral work?8. Who did you see as your reader/audience of the written text?9. What were you wanting to achieve in your written text?

10. What is the relationship between images and text in the written component of your doctorate?11. What would you say is the particular contribution to knowledge made in your doctoral work?12. To what extent/in what way is this displayed in your written text?

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Brian Paltridge is Professor of TESOL at the University of Sydney. His most recent publications are Thesis and Dissertation Writing in a Second Language(Routledge 2007, with Sue Starfield), Teaching Academic Writing (University of Michigan Press 2010, with colleagues at the University of Sydney), ContinuumCompanion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics (2010, edited with Aek Phakiti), Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis (2011, edited with KenHyland) and New Directions in English for Specific Purposes Research (University of Michigan Press 2011, edited with Diane Belcher and Ann Johns) and theHandbook of English for Specific Purposes (edited with Sue Starfield, Wiley-Blackwell 2013). His main research interests are academic writing, genre analysisand critical discourse studies.

Sue Starfield is Director of The Learning Centre and Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales. She is co-author ofThesis and Dissertation Writing in a Second Language: A Handbook for Supervisors (Routledge 2007) and editor, with Brian Paltridge, of the Blackwell Handbookof English for Specific Purposes (Wiley-Blackwell 2013). She is co-editor of the journal English for Specific Purposes. Her main research interests are academicwriting, identity in academic writing and research genres.

Louise J. Ravelli is Associate Professor in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales. Her research interest is communication inprofessional contexts, using social semiotic approaches, including systemic functional linguistics and multi-modal discourse analysis, to enhancecommunication outcomes. Key areas of application include museum communication and academic literacy. Recent books include Museum Texts: Commu-nication Frameworks (2006) and Analysing Academic Writing (2004, with Robert A. Ellis).

Kathryn Tuckwell is an editor and social semiotician. Her main research interests are systemic functional linguistic theory, systemic functional grammar,systems thinking, discourse analysis and multimodal semiotics. She is currently co-authoring a chapter titled “The teleological illusion in linguistic ‘drift’:choice and purpose in semantic evolution” for a volume on choice in linguistics to be published by Cambridge University Press; other recent publicationsinclude papers on comparative semiotics, grammatical and semantic agency in explanations of evolution, and bias in the reporting of war.