(Happen to notice a title change and some editing? I love it when I get something completely wrong, which I did initially in this post, where I confused Peter Suber’s words with those of C. Max Magee, Thorny Technology: Open Access Causes Problems at the Iowa Writers Workshop, The Millions, March 13, 2008. All I can plead is a failure to follow the indents in Suber’s post. Thanks to alert reader Rick Mason for quickly commenting. Let me start over, and-a one, and-a two…)
I was wandering in the wilderness in mid-March, so I missed the scuffle over electronic theses at the University of Iowa, home of the Iowa Writers Workshop. Students and faculty had been arguing that the University of Iowa’s open-access policy greatly diminishes their theses’ marketability.
Over at the Open Access News blog, Peter Suber groused quoted Magee grousing that MFA writing programs “do their students a disservice by deciding to call their students’ culminating works, ‘graduate theses.'” Suber Magee then kicked sand in my eyes:
In the academic world, terms like this [i.e., thesis] have concrete meanings, and there are – sometimes unwritten – rules that govern their usage. Perhaps it would be too much too suggest that calling the final projects of MFAs “theses” is overcompensation by programs that have an inferiority complex when compared to the more grounded academic disciplines, but Iowa and other programs should be aware of these rules in the first place …
I know a little about the standards of the “academic world.” I don’t wear my c.v. on my sleeve, but it’s worth pointing out that my MFA from a small Jesuit university was in many ways more rigorous than my previous two degrees from the University of Illinois and Barnard College — put together. My MFA thesis was hard-fought-for and hard-won, and I’m proud of it.
Is my MFA thesis ready to publish? Of course not. The definition of thesis is “a proposition to be maintained or proved.” The writing-program thesis is a mid-effort work product that “proves” the student has mastered the ability to leap from a hopeful first draft into the grim, sweaty slog toward a product that has some of the shapeliness of what we recognize as literature.
Of the thirteen essays in my master’s thesis, four are either published or in press; one is slightly MIA; two are making the rounds; others are in revision; some may stay silent, bound in buckram. None of my published or in-press essays went to press exactly as they were presented in my thesis. I revised the essays — some a lot, some a little — and then the light hands of editors (no, I’m not being facetious) groomed them a little more. (If your essay needs more than a “light hand,” ‘it’s not going to get accepted anyway.)
This is not a broken model, nor does it mean that there was anything wrong or substandard with my thesis. It’s how writing works. For every MFA student who makes a splash with a publisher-ready thesis, there are thousands more who produce works that fully realize what a writing program is intended to do, even though their manuscript stops short of anything people outside the jurisdiction of creative writing (to Andrew-Abbotize this discussion) would realize as a final product. This fine-grained attention to literary excellence — Slow Writing, we could call it — is what makes the MFA in Writing the de facto “English” degree of this century.
When will the essays in my thesis be ready to publish? My first answer: the gold standard for an MFA thesis is not whether it is a publishable work — a benchmark too fluid and market-driven to be an academic standard — but whether it represents my understanding and execution of the steps in the journey from idea to manuscript. My second answer: my essays will be ready when I say they are ready, not according to some arbitrary hourglass. Yes, I am saying I am not appeased by short-term “embargoes.”
I believe in many of the tenets of open access. But I’m left cold by Suber Magee’s sour-grapesical dismissal of another discipline’s rigor and shapeliness. If that’s the winning strategy for open access, I’ll stay in the traditional-publishing camp.
Posted on this day, other years:
- State Associations and all that - 2007
- I did not say... - 2007
- Germanic? Mais non, petit Walter! - 2006
- Podcasting on the Rise - 2005
- Librarian Writers, Writer Librarians - 2005
Karen, it appears that the quote you attribute to Peter Suber is actually from C. Max Magee, from The Millions blog.
Suber stresses that he had “never thought about OA for works of fiction and creative writing submitted for degree requirements in an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program like the Iowa Writer’s Workshop”, and, it seems to me that he doesn’t take a direct position on the validity of fiction/creative writing and dissertations.
I agree 100% with your statements on the effort that goes into the MFA, and you make a strong and valid argument about the level of scholarship and commitment required to succeed in the endeavor.
However, the sand was kicked in your face by Magee, not Suber, and I would encourage you to not dismiss Open Access based on Magee’s comments, but rather judge it on its own merits and the circumstances it would be applied.
btw, your blog is always interesting, and I look forward to each new post!
I like going to visit my thesis when I’m in town, and it’s true that it sits there on the shelf, ready for anyone to pick up.
But, as a fellow graduate pointed out in an email, that level of access is a lot different from the level that digitization would provide. Two of the essays in it have been published; others may yet be, in some form, and others will, properly I think, languish there on the shelf. And still others–as my friend pointed out–are things that I wouldn’t want digitized until I was able to go back and change a few more names and details.
This is an interesting point about open access archives, and the thorny questions apply to more than MFA students. Many humanities scholars depend on turning their dissertation into that first published book. There are promotion and tenure committees out there counting the number of books. Books are still the going commerce in humanities, unlike the sciences, where the article holds sway. It is unclear to me how publishers will respond to book proposals that are based on dissertations that reside in an open archive. They have a hard enough time selling scholarly books as it is. Of course, one might argue that dissertations are already widely available and the growth of open archives should have no impact. I’m withholding comment. This may be one more nudge toward overhauling the academic promotion and tenure process. Which would be welcomed, since it is, in fact, the engine that drives our outrageous subscription costs.
Steven, I agree with you. Overall, I agree with much of the OA movement, including its benefits to the promotion/tenure process and to access to quality information. But I was taught in the Air Force, “Flexibility is the key/To air superiority.” We need to recognize that different disciplines have different publishing models… and no academic library is suffering from the cost of novels or essay collections.
I have seen zero actual evidence that a humanities monograph has been rejected owing to its existence as an ETD. I’ve heard it RUMORED constantly. I’d like to see some proof.
Dorothea, I’m arguing from the other side of the tarmac. The essays in my “humanities monograph” would be unpublishable if they were pre-published on the open Web. The only essays that might have a fighting chance are those that I have had to completely disassemble. I sign agreements for my work that make it very clear that my work hasn’t been pre-published anywhere else (and won’t be). So far most MFA programs have been able to avoid arbitrary pre-publishing, but no one is going to write a book that can’t get published.
I have another issue, which is the question of whose work product it is. As a student, I’m a consumer. Why is it that the university gets to decide what happens to my expensively-earned work product?
I think a former coworker, poet Eduardo Corral put it very well
(http://lorcaloca.blogspot.com)
“The very idea that someone can click on a link online and read my Iowa MFA thesis makes my stomach turn. Why? Vanity. Ego. I’m not being modest when I say my MFA thesis SUCKS.Wow.”
Shrug. My undergraduate thesis sucks too. I put it on the Web for all to see, because sucky though it is, it’s still the only English translation of that particular work out there.
It was the best I could do at the time. I could do better now. So it goes.
O.k., Anne, there is that, as well. 😉 I recently watched one of my beloved essays get pulled apart in a post-MFA workshop. It was good for me, but excruciating. “For fear that they walk to the grave in labor…”
Dorothea, a lot of academic work would benefit from being on the web. A lot of STM publishing would, as well. And publishing some types of MFA material might be so difficult that the MFA student might elect to put it on the Web anyway, if it’s truly good but will have a hard time finding a publisher.
The key word there is “elect.” Not frog-marched. Nor should the MFA program turn into a charade where a student intentionally submits less than her very best work in order to get around some university’s arbitrary requirements.
It’s very likely that most literary journals may go open-access and online over the next decade, but it should be a choice. My work is part of me, and just as I don’t want the gummint interfering with my decisions about my body, I don’t want the gummint interfering with my creative path.
I agree frog-marching to the tune of “pomp and circumstance” would be unseemly and contrary to the way academics should work. Nobody should be forced to participate in a repository. How to make the OA movement look bad. And it was absurd to handle MFA theses the same way as dissertations in physics or sociology. Creative work that is preparation for life in a world that is not subsidized by universities or federal grants is just plain different. (I do wonder about the idea a thesis is unfinished work – about giving degrees for a work in progress – but then, I don’t have an MFA and have never worked in an institution that grants them, so maybe I’m just misinformed.)
On a slightly different note, I wonder what it benefits us if a scholar in the humanities who writes a dissertation (not creative writing, but let’s say an interpretation of several Shakespeare plays using a Bakhtinian critical lens, which was my thesis), then basically has it professionally reedited into a “proper” book. Wouldn’t we better off if we put those resources into publishing a different book? One that adds something new to the mix? Sure, the UP version would be improved, but in an era when so many books sell under 300 copies, what exactly is the point of putting all that effort into polishing and selling something a little scruffy that may well find a much larger audience if it’s in an electronic depository?
I mulled this over at ACRLog a while ago – it would help if librarians understood writers better and writers didn’t think OA was a gunpowder plot to blow up author’s rights.
Let’s stretch this even farther! “Wouldn’t we better off if we put those resources into publishing a different book?” How about if we put resources into editing and buffing that thesis and publishing it online, through the repository? If we can spend umpty-ump buckaroos on El$evier, can we not employ a few humanities-types to improve the quality of ETDs? Because otherwise, we’re saying that something is “good enough for Internet work.”