PhD candidate Jana M. Perkins successfully defended her dissertation, "Scholarship writ large: A data-rich analysis of professionalization in English literary scholarship from 1940 to the present."
Perkins' dissertation committee includes Associate Professor Ryan Cordell (chair); Associate Professor Maria Bonn; Tess McNulty, assistant professor in the Department of English; and Professor Ted Underwood.
Abstract: The standards that must be met by practitioners who wish to conduct themselves as professionals within English literary scholarship have long corresponded to the frameworks of institutional theory, which posits that it’s possible to study all manner of institutions in similar ways because they share common characteristics. While practitioners working across the various fields of English literary scholarship are not all linked by identical objects of study, they are all linked through the institutional logics of the profession, which include the shared practice of their participation in its systems of professional training and the structures of its academic writing.
As an established academic discipline that has existed, in some form, since the 18th century, English literary scholarship boasts a long history. Yet meta-studies of it, such as this one, are uncommon. Those who work in literary studies tend to work within the discipline rather than on the discipline; as a result, this subfield remains a still-developing area of study for which numerous foundational topics remain unaddressed. This dissertation analyzes key trends over the past 85 years to undertake that task, tracking several forms of 'incremental change' to establish a series of useful benchmarks on underexamined topics and extend current debates.