What are the best resources from the CUNY Graduate Center?
The GC library is a great place for help and guidance with the dissertation process. You definitely need to check out the Research Guide for Dissertations and Theses from the GC Library. There is a huge amount of vital information here! It’s truly amazing, and you should spend quite a bit of time exploring this important site. Included you’ll find:
A guide for how to find sample dissertations in your field
A list of links for browsing dissertations from CUNY GC students by academic discipline .
Information on how to format your dissertation, with sample pages to download.
GC Dissertation Research Librarian Roxanne Shirazi’s slide presentation on how to deposit your dissertation.
Information about how to proceed with a digital dissertation.
Citation style guides for all disciplines.
What resources do other graduate programs have?
The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This is a place for big picture thinking and organization advice. Scroll down for the especially helpful sections on managing your committee and using the dissertation to make that shift from student to scholar.
The Graduate Writing Center Webinars at Teacher’s College at Columbia University
Webinars are free and cover things like the conventions of clinical writing, literature reviews, APA style guidelines, and academic writing more generally.
Resources for Writing in the Disciplines from The University of Maryland Graduate SchoolThis is a wonderful set of resources organized by discipline! It covers the humanities, the social sciences, and science and engineering. You’ll find links for everything from academic writing conventions in the humanities to software tools for data organization and presentation.
What do other dissertation writers have to say?
You don’t shelve your humanity when you start writing your dissertation. It’s important to stay connected to a compassionate community and to take care of yourself intellectually and emotionally. Acknowledging how our lived experiences amplify social problems like racism, poverty, and stress is important!
Clifton Boyd’s powerful article Being a Black PhD Student Following George Floyd’s Murder is about the emotional cost of doing graduate work in the era of BLM.
Liz Wasden’s article 8 Tips for Balancing Grad School and Full-Time Work offers some ideas about staying organized and a few links to software that can help with academic writing.
What writing guides are worth reading?
Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers is definitely worth checking out. Free copies are available at the GC Library and at archive.org.
Read Chapter 3 from Paul Silvia’s How to Write a Lot, “The Care and Feeding of Writing Schedules”
