Disrupting the Dissertation, Phenomenologically Speaking: A Reflexive Dialogue Between Adviser and Advisee

• In Event: Living It Out: Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry as Politic and Practice in the Academy

Abstract

This presentation features a dialogic multigenre conversation between advisee and advisor to explore some of the tensions and possibilities when graduate students use alternative dissertation formats. The graduate student discusses her phenomenological dissertation, written in the format of a teen magazine, and her stuck places when relying on writing as a method of inquiry: those moments when her writing-as-thinking (Hughes & Bridges-Rhoads, 2013) quickly morphed into writing paralysis and she could no longer write about/through her phenomenon of interest, because she did not know how she would present the animating, evocative story she wanted to tell. Her advisor, contributes his observations and insights by pointing to possibilities perhaps not yet visible to the student, and at other times actively attempts to get out of her way. All the while, the advisor keeps a core tenet of his post-intentional (Vagle, 2010 a, b) phenomenology in play—to remain committed to seeing all knowledge and intentional relations (and in turn the dissertation’s “form” and the “pedagogical advice” he gave in relation to the dissertation) as tentative and fleeting.

Authors

• Hilary E. Hughes, University of Georgia - Athens

• Mark D. Vagle, University of Minnesota