Dissertation Defense & Beyond

On Wednesday, I defended my dissertation, which is the final evaluation for the PhD. Good news: I passed! And I’m now done with the PhD. All that remains is filing my dissertation with the graduate school. It’s kind of a weird feeling to be done. I’ve been working on this thing for so long now, it just felt like a way of life. Now onto something else, I suppose! But I wanted to share a little about what the defense was like before I move on completely.

Defenses in our department typically last for two hours. The first half hour is open to the public and the candidate gives a 20 minute presentation about the research, followed by 10 minutes of open Q&A. The atmosphere at this portion is really jovial; everyone is there to celebrate and it felt like such a wonderfully supportive community coming together for this event.

I was hugely anxious about this part of the defense. I’m not sure why — if I can’t talk freely about my dissertation for 20 minutes, I really have no business getting a degree, but in the days leading up to the defense, I was pretty much a total wreck worrying about what I would say and whether I would pace myself well enough to fit everything in. My anxiety manifested in a wacky ways, too. The day before, I went into my advisor’s office and blurted out, “Should I make blueberry muffins or blueberry coffee cake in muffin shapes for the defense?!” and then outlined the pros and cons of each for five minutes. He was so nice; he just smiled and told me that either one would be great. I went with the blueberry coffee cake recipe in muffin shapes (I will have that recipe for you soon, because it was a great recipe!). Anyway, I woke up at 5am on the day of the defense, got Eric up and started cooking. I made food for the dogs and then got to work making a bazillion muffins. I woke up and my face was super swollen! I had had some bizarre allergic reaction in the night and my eyes were so puffy, my vision was slightly obstructed. I took one look in the mirror and burst out laughing. Of COURSE I would wake up on the day of my defense with hives! I took some Benadryl, which helped, but my face remained puffy throughout the day. Oh well!

But back to the defense. After the public portion, everyone except the committee left the room (including me) and the committee talked about secret things. Then my advisor (Michael Brown) came to get me and we began the exam portion. This portion lasted for a little over an hour and involved each committee member (Lucy Jarosz, Victoria Lawson and Maria Elena Garcia) asking me questions about the work and making comments about what they thought while reading it. They had great questions and suggestions for ways of developing it in the future for the book and for articles on the subject. This portion felt amazingly productive and got me excited about next steps. I just kept feeling so lucky through the whole thing to have these brilliant scholars in a room together to discuss my work and help me think through ways of making it better. What a treat!

After everyone had asked their questions and made their comments, I was sent out of the room so they could discuss the verdict. Within a few minutes, Michael was coming out to greet me with a big hug and ‘congratulations!’ I went back into the room and we talked for another 15 minutes specifically about turning the dissertation into a book and they agreed that I should send it out to publishers pretty much right away. After the defense was over, I went out for vegan pizza and beers with friends from the department and then I went out for a wonderful dinner that night with Eric and his mom and her husband. A really special (and really tiring!) day!

And so, I guess that brings me to the question of what’s next? I’ve got a bunch of writing projects going on right now that I need to finish. And I’m excited to get a book proposal written up and sent out to publishers to move toward publishing the dissertation as a book. I’m teaching this summer, which I’ll do another post about at a later date. And I’m lined up for teaching at UW next year. I’ll go on the job market in the fall and look for an academic job. And I’m looking forward to making more room for blogging this summer and putting out another e-cookbook, as well as launching online classes through Serenity in the Storm. So, lots of exciting projects on the horizon! As always, thanks so much to all of your for reading, putting up with my inconsistent blogging lately, and being part of this little online community here. I’m so grateful for all of you!

If anyone would like to read the dissertation, feel free to email me at serenityinthestorm@gmail.com and I’ll send you a copy to read. Also, the article I wrote and blogged about a while back on sexualized violence and gendered commodification of the cow, is available to read online for free right now until July as part of a feminist geography reader released by Gender, Place and Culture, so feel free to check it out if you missed it last time, along with the other feminist geography articles in the reader!

Stay tuned for an awesome muffin/coffee cake recipe, coming soon! [And thanks, Jason MacLeod for the picture above!]

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