PhDs embracing non-traditional dissertations, but hiring committees lagging

Humanities programs in the US have increasingly allowed doctoral dissertations to take on non-traditional formats, writes Vimal Patel for the Chronicle of Higher Education, but academic hiring committees are yet to catch up with this new development. Patel notes that it is becoming common for some PhD candidates in the humanities to submit dissertations in the form of documentaries, interactive analyses of texts, or even comic books. But he notes that many hiring and promotion committees, though, think that students who pursue non-traditional dissertation formats “may be ‘guinea pigs,’ participating in an experiment that could hobble them on an already tough academic job market.” Chronicle of Higher Education