The Adventure of Writing a Dissertation

 As many of you reading this already know, since the end of 2020 I have been finally pursuing that doctoral degree I have been after for a while.  After a bit of a disappointment with not getting into Catholic University of America like I originally desired, my counsel with our former parish priest, Fr. John Jicha, led me to look into Liberty University, which offers online doctoral programs.  I applied in the Spring of 2020, was accepted, and started my first term in Fall 2020.  After successfully completing three years of classroom work - and maintaining a 3.89 GPA - I entered the dissertation phase last summer.  In the process, I was accepted into an online honor society (Omega Nu Lambda - an honor society for online students) and I also at the halfway point of my program was awarded a postgraduate Executive Certificate in History, both of which I received in 2022.  It has had its challenges - due to the loss of both parents during the past few years, as well as going through a divorce and also facing some financial challenges - but I am quite happy with how it is coming together.  So, I wanted to share a little of that journey with you.

As anyone will tell you who has either achieved a Ph.D. or is in the process of completing one, a program like this is in phases.  One phase of it has to do with classroom work.  These are courses that are both practical in nature as well as helping the student focus on an area of study for their final dissertation. In many ways, those courses are little different from classwork completed in a Master's program, although the research is a bit more intensive.  The second phase of my particular program was a series of 4 comprehensive reading courses, which focus on different areas in which you read a LOT of books for a particular period in history and then produce annotated bibliographies on what is read.  That phase is the most tedious and intensive of the program, and each of the 4 courses end with an essay exam focusing on a question that relates to the time period.  The final phase is actually the dissertation phase, and for me it is divided into three parts.  The first part of the dissertation phase entails gathering research and creating one's historiographic analysis, a methodology, and settling on questions the dissertation will address.  The second part is actually drafting the chapters of the dissertation itself, and can take up to several months.  The final part before defending and publishing is the revision stage, in which your faculty chair and at least two other faculty readers review each chapter, present what they feel needs work and revisions, and then after that is taken care of the actual manuscript is assembled from the revised chapters.  To be honest, it is a lot of work, especially in the first steps, but it does get easier as one goes along and understands their own material enough to defend it later.  At this point, I am at the early stages of the revision process, and have several months on that to go yet before being ready to publish and defend.  I ask for your prayers, as it is an involved process, but so far I feel good about everything. 

So, what is a dissertation?  Essentially, it entails the fruit of all the education you have had - undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral - and it is essentially a book for all intents.  It can average up to 300 pages (approximately the length of mine) and it is organized into chapters based on the research questions and also the other factors that contribute to the narrative.  A Master's thesis is similar but not the same length - I personally was not required to complete a Master's thesis in my graduate work, as my program then had a comprehensive exam at the end covering all the coursework in the program.  Many doctoral candidates do go on to publish their dissertations as a marketable book, but for the purpose of defending it the manuscript is published as a one-sided hardbound book of which a copy will be placed in the university library.  Obviously, the curiosity of those reading this will pique as to what my dissertation is about, and I will go into that now.

As my Ph.D. is in History (or will be soon), I originally narrowed my choices down to three areas of particular interest to me.  The first was Appalachian History, given I am a native of the region and the local history of my region did present a good opportunity.  The second area I had an interest in was late Roman Antiquity, meaning the last 100 years before the Western Roman Empire fell in AD 476, and then the subsequent events that followed up to Charlemagne's conquering of the Lombards in the 9th century.  However, the focus I settled upon was World War II History, which has always fascinated me.  Therefore, my dissertation has to do with the ideological influences that shaped the Nazis, and in essence I focused on four areas - occultism, eugenics/Darwinian evolution, political influences (particularly the Geopolitik of Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer, as well as the influence of groups like the Freikorps and Wandervogel), and finally philosophical influences (Kant, Nietzsche, Gobineau, H.S. Chamberlain).  Of course, as my faculty chair pointed out, there was to be something more original as a dimension to the narrative, and upon examining it I fell back on some earlier ideas that caught my attention from my Master's program - primary from Biblical hermeneutics and from Personalist Philosophy.  The hermeneutical aspect of it is also anthropological/sociological, as it entails a group "story" - a narrative of the worldview of particular group that centers around a series of ideas called central narrative convictions, or CNCs.  CNCs provide answers to four basic questions:

1. who are we?

2. where are we?

3. What's wrong?

4. What's the remedy?

That idea came to me from a book by Pentecostal theologian Kenneth Archer, whose book A Pentecostal Hermeneutic deal with these questions, which he referenced and borrowed from an earlier book by Brian Walsh and H. Richard Middleton entitled A Transforming Vision.  CNCs shape the narrative, or "story," of a particular group, and the group does not have to be good - even evil groups like the Nazis had CNCs that shaped their own narrative, albeit we would understand as a warped worldview on their part.  The second aspect of this has to do with what is unique to the Nazis as a movement as contrasted what they assimilated from earlier influences, and for this I relied on an idea I saw in Dr. John F. Crosby's book The Selfhood of the Human Person.  Dr. Crosby is the Chair of the Philosophy Department at my alma mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville, and the essence of his argument are quite fundamental.  Each individual - and in this application, each group - has two sets of attributes.  First, there are attributes which are unique to the individual or particular group, and we call these incommunicables.  Secondly there are shared or borrowed attributes common to either the individuals within a group or a group within a particular ideological sphere, and these are called communicables or universals. Like the CNCs, these attributes in both cases are not limited to just groups we consider good, as evil groups have them too.  This constitutes the second question of my dissertation - what did the Nazis possess that was unique to them, and what did they borrow from their predecessors from which they evolved?  Another question has to do with conflicting things - why the Nazis would later persecute some of their most influential allies and influences (notably Ernst Rohm, Karl Haushofer, and Rudolf von Sebottendorf)?  This is not a comprehensive summary of the entire dissertation, but it will give you an idea of what I am working on.  It also fits into what the dissertation process is all about too - it is taking things I have learned, making proper applications of them, and thus the dissertation serves as a climactic fruit of my total education.  And, in the case of my topic, it is total - this is an area I have been interested in since I was a kid in all honesty, and I came into the dissertation phase with a full background in study of this topic.  As a matter of fact, one of the chapters was an extension of a class project I did for an earlier course. Doing this entails a lot, and to be honest I have been challenged with the angles I have had to take in the final product of this whole thing.  But, it also has rewards too - the biggest reward is finally being finished with formal education after almost 50 years of it from kindergarten to my Ph.D.  And, frankly, at almost 55 years of age I am ready to retire as a student.  Hopefully in the near future my classroom work will be in front of the class teaching it rather than sitting at a desk learning it.  But, a curious mind is always learning, and we should all be lifelong students in a less formal capacity anyway. 

Upon completing and being conferred with a Ph.D., I plan on publishing the dissertation as a book for wider audiences, as well as utilizing the research for other projects - my earlier Genesis study could benefit from some of this material as I revise that later and make it a published book as well.  For those who may be interested in this, I will keep you posted. 

Thank you for allowing me to give you a glimpse into my Ph.D. journey, and I covet and appreciate your continued prayers for me.  See you next time!