How to survive your prospectus - Part 1 (Part 2 is here)
or “Know your sections”
Quick disclaimer: Everything that follows comes from personal experience and should not be taken as absolute rules, in no way whatsoever.
Quick disclaimer 2: Because of this, it reflects what writing a prospectus for a dissertation in the Humanities has been like.
Quick disclaimer 3: Always always always check with your advisor (or with your whole committee) what they expect from the prospectus, as it can (and should) differ from case to case.
Ideally, your advisor will tell you, going in, what are the sections that are expected on your prospectus. But if they don’t, here’s what mine looks like (and some short sentences/prompts to keep in mind as you go about them). I believe these sections can be more or less retained if you’re writing a short proposal or project:
Introduction: “X, an example of Y, happened. What interests me in Y?”
Ideally, this is only one or two (max!) paragraphs long. If you have a case that can serve as a hook for the reader to be drawn in, use it. Attach the big question mentioned about to the end of the introduction.
State of the field: “People have said this about Y.”
In my case, it was a historiographical review. I created something like a little mind map on paper with the main authors/text I knew I had to go through under headings such as “political history”, “in literature” and “in art,” and it helped me visualize how I could link them. Don’t expect to cover it all, though - selection helps you frame your question. For instance, if you’re interested in masculinity in the French empire, are you primarily interested in the history of the French empire or in the history of masculinity?
Theoretical framework: “I will look at Y from the perspective Z.”
This may also turn out to be a methodological framework, depending on your question and how you’re framing it. Again, not about an argument - pinpoint the authors that have helped you frame your question and your approach to sources.
Specific goals of my dissertation: “I think looking at Y from the perspective of Z will allow me to observe W.”
This is where you come closest to making a point. You can justify your sources in general terms and develop your question - break it into more precise points and make sure you indicate why you believe connecting these points is an important contribution to your field.
Chapter outline: “This is how everything comes together.”
A chapter outline can vary a lot. I know of people who presented tentative titles and key-phrases that are going to be in their chapters; I wrote five pages on roughly 6 chapters because I thought it helped me prove my point about my source selection, chronology etc.
Sources: “This is where I’ll look for W.”
A paragraph just describing the state of the corpus. Mine is scattered across countries and supports, so I just wanted to make sure that my readers knew I am aware of this situation. I then annotated the primary sources and archival collections to indicate how they fit into my research; I also indicated when they were available online, which means my readers and I can have an easier sense of how much traveling I’ll require for archival work.
Bibliography
Everything I ever read about the topic and everything I could find that seems to be relevant in any way possible.
General points, especially for short-format projects:
1) If you have a limited space, divide and conquer
The emphasis will depend on what kind of project/proposal you are writing. Is it a grant for archival work? Play up how your documents are necessary to your work and how it will contribute to the field. Is it a targeted grant by area? Play up the importance of your questions to a broader debate.
But don’t worry about space (at first)
Write to your heart’s content. As you edit your text, you’ll find yourself naturally trimming down your project to avoid redundancies and to exclude confusing passages. But don’t worry about the limit at first, because you’ll find it more troubling than helpful.
2) Know your reader
This is especially important if you have readers/committee members from outside your field or if you’re applying for a grant that attracts a wide variety of candidates - and therefore has radically different readers, whom you’ll have to convince of the relevance of your project in a wider dialogue among fields of the humanities and/or social sciences. If you are writing to an audience of experts, you have to make sure that it’s specific enough to not be seen as a survey while not restricting it to a talk exclusively among peers.
3) Pick and choose, wisely
Stay away from jargon, stay away from minute information, stay away from detailed background: tell your reader strictly what they need to know. One excessive sentence at one point is one necessary sentence you don’t get to write elsewhere.
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