Standards for Thesis Excellence
The GLS Critical Creative Production (CCP) concentration offers two senior thesis options: the creative thesis, which may take any form and is submitted along with a creative process document; and the traditional written thesis, a less common but equally valued CCP thesis form. Whether creative or traditional, the most successful CCP theses present innovative perspectives on objects, arts, places, institutions, practices, phenomena, and/or ideas. These theses examine how such subjects are shaped or challenged by social, cultural and/or cross-border exchange and conflict; identity; intersectionality; and/or other forms of globality.
While creative and traditional CCP theses share several standards for excellence, there are also notable differences between criteria for assessing each.
In general, a successful CCP creative thesis and accompanying creative process document do most if not all of the following:
- Critically engage a clear question or problem concerning a clearly defined subject or set of subjects. These might be objects, arts, places, institutions, practices, phenomena, and/or ideas.
- Demonstrate an innovative, deliberate formal approach. The form of creative theses tends more often than not to be an essential aspect of the perspective the thesis communicates.
- Address, if not in the thesis itself then in the accompanying creative process document, how globality and its exchanges, collaborations, conflicts, and/or identities have influenced the form and content of the thesis.
- Show awareness, perhaps in the thesis itself and certainly in the creative process document, of the student’s own positionality in relation to the subject or subjects to which the thesis responds.
- Discuss or demonstrate most if not all of the following in the creative process document:
- the question or problem at stake in the thesis;
- the process by which the thesis was created;
- the rationale for the form the thesis takes and understanding of the craft employed;
- the role of cross-disciplinary research in shaping the thesis;
- familiarity with ongoing discussions about the clearly defined subject(s) to which the thesis responds;
- the role globality plays in the thesis and its production; and
- the place of the thesis in an intellectual lineage and/or thread of learning in Global Liberal Studies.
In general, a successful traditional CCP thesis does most if not all of the following:
- Critically engage a clear question or problem concerning a clearly defined subject or set of subjects, usually works of creative and/or cultural significance. These might be objects, arts, places, institutions, practices, phenomena, and/or ideas.
- Address how globality and its exchanges, collaborations, conflicts, and identities have influenced the form and content of the thesis.
- Show awareness of the student’s own positionality in relation to the subject or subjects to which the thesis responds.
- Demonstrate a deliberate, cross-disciplinary research process.
- Make unexpected, innovative, and productive connections between subjects and between subjects and ideas.
- Demonstrate familiarity with ongoing discussions about the clearly defined subject(s) to which the thesis responds.
- Address the role globality plays in shaping the subject(s) to which the thesis responds and the student’s response to these subjects.
- Communicate if not an answer or solution to the question or problem the thesis sets out to explore, then a new way of considering the question or problem at stake that leaves room for further research and contributes new ways of thinking to relevant ongoing discussions.
- Places itself in an intellectual lineage and/or thread of learning in Global Liberal Studies.