Workshop: Transform Your Dissertation into a Book

Sponsored by AIIS, AIBS, AIPS and AISLS

AIIS holds an annual dissertation to book workshop at the Madison South Asia Conference every October. The workshop is intended to assist recent PhDs convert their doctoral dissertations into publishable monographs.  More detailed information on the workshop schedule is available below.

This workshop aims to help a select number of recent PhDs re-vision their doctoral dissertations as books.

The list of books published by past workshop participants is available here

 

View/download this flyer as a PDF

Applications to participate are due by July 31, 2024, emailed to Sarah Lamb at this dedicated email address: .  The workshop will begin at 7 pm Tuesday evening, Oct. 29, 2024, and all participants are expected to be present at this time. The workshop concludes Wednesday evening, October 30, 2024 with a group dinner.

For selection: Please submit your proposal by email (to ) by July 31, 2024 as an attachment, containing ONE pdf file combining:

Senior Faculty Mentors: Faculty from a range of disciplines and areas of expertise will serve as mentors. In 2024, the senior faculty mentors will include: Sarah Lamb (convener; Anthropology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Brandeis University), Laura Brueck (South Asian and Comparative Literature, Northwestern University), Tejaswini Ganti (Anthropology/Culture and Media, New York University),  Douglas Haynes (History, Dartmouth College), Arsalan Khan (Anthropology, University of Tennessee,  Knoxville) , Arvind Rajagopal (Media, Culture and Communication, New York University),  Haimanti Roy (History, University of Dayton), Akshya Saxena (English, Vanderbilt University) and Anand Yang (History, University of Washington)

Schedule: All meetings will take place at the Madison Concourse Hotel

  • Tuesday evening, October 29, 7:00 to 8:30 pm: Secrets of Publishing: Introductions and Q&A regarding publishing, next steps, etc. Several faculty mentors with experience in recruiting manuscripts for presses and in publishing their own books will participate. Tea, coffee, cheese & crackers, and cookies will be served.
  • Wednesday morning, October 30, 8:30 am to 12:15 pm (with a coffee break from 10:15-10:30 am): We will divide into three groups of 8 authors and 2-3 mentors. Each project will be discussed for 23-25 minutes. In advance, everyone will read all of the materials for their group. For each 23-25-minute segment, one participant will make a 3-5-minute presentation on someone else’s project, and then the other participants will join in to discuss the project—except the project’s author, who is not allowed to speak. The author of the project under discussion can only listen, take notes, and record if desired, how their project is being understood, misunderstood, stretched, queried, critiqued, and praised by knowledgeable peers with closely related interests but working in varying theoretical perspectives, disciplines, settings, and time periods.
  • Lunch break (on one’s own): 12:15 to 1:45 pm
  • Wednesday afternoon, 1:45 to 5:30 pm (with a coffee break from 3:30-3:45): Each author is given a 25-minute time slot to respond to the more important queries, issues, and suggestions raised in the morning, and, most important, to seek feedback or further discussion of areas of their project with which they recognize they are having difficulty.
  • Wednesday evening at 6:30 pm: AIIS will host all participants at a group dinner at the Maharani Indian Restaurant, 380 W. Washington Street (several blocks from the Concourse Hotel) (final restaurant choice to be confirmed)

Conversations can carry over into Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the South Asia Conference!