Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Comments written on my dissertation

For the last three pages, you've been tearing this other person's dissertation apart, but here you are citing their evidence as proof of your own argument. Perhaps pick one or the other?

Here you write that newspaper readers sympathized with 'Man A' and not with 'Man B' because 'man a' was a respectable middle class bank clerk and 'Man B' was a homeless blackmailer. But have you considered whether newspaper readers also sympathized with 'Man A' because 'Man B' blackmailed him until 'Man A' killed himself, leaving behind a wife and child?


Here you've written that 'Cabaret Dancer A''s case shows that the police were tolerant of naked cabaret, because the police decided not to bring obscenity charges against her and she kept doing her show. Several pages later, in a small paragraph, you note that two years later, police did bring obscenity charges against 'Cabaret Dancer A', and she was tried, convicted, and fined. But you argue that "the fact that she was fined shows that her behavior was not prohibited--if fined, a person can still do the behavior they were fined for. They just have to pay a fine."--Is this the best example for this argument?

7 comments:

Could-be-a-model said...

It's time to start changing names.

Tom said...

I like the way in which these critiques are phrased as rhetorical questions.

You misspelled the name of the Wiemar Republic several times. Perhaps it would be better to use the correct spelling?

This paragraph consists of the same curse word repeated 40 times and a period. Maybe you should rephrase to remove some of the redundancy (or add a semi-colon)?

Anonymous said...

These comments are maddening! Tom is very funny.

CheeseQuest said...

am I the only one who's heartened by the fact that someone out there actually reads our dissertations?

Anonymous said...

cq - no, i thought the same thing. sad, huh? and yes, this tom is very funny indeed.

your small american said...

At one point I got a comment like, "Let's brainstorm together different ways to analyze these sources" meaning "I totally don't buy your argument here" but really nice and helpful sounding!

CheeseQuest said...

Hmmm, "brainstorm together." Why don't they just tell you what your analysis should be instead of pretending like you have any say in the matter?