3.1 Focused discussion with mid-career and senior scholars  (Page 2/7)

One scholar, who characterized her training and early career path as“completely canonical,”spoke of working actively with an editor to transform her dissertation into a book.“I spent a few years rewriting my dissertation with the help of an editor who turned it into something completely different.”(Not unimportantly, perhaps, she added,“My dissertation advisor had published with her.”) To this, another scholar added that“developmental editing [has] dropped out of academic publishing andlargely of trade publishing, [as well].”

Speaking of her current students, one scholar said,“None has published. My very best has produced long and wonderful articles, but is having a very hard time getting promotedbecause she doesn’t have a book. I didn’t have any problems with my first two books.[But]now, I’m having mid-career trouble finding a publisher. Everyone loves [my topic]but no one knows the artist and publishers are afraid it won’t sell.”

This professor is not the only mid-career scholar having difficulties finding outlets for current work.Another noted,“My colleagues shopped their books extensively. Usually the topic was the issue. All three publishedabroad.”

In many cases, say mid-career scholars, dissertations are not suitable for turning into books and would bebetter off published in other formats. This may be due to conditions characteristic of a particular subfield in which astudent is working, or to a mismatch between what is required of a dissertation and what is required of a publishable manuscript, orto lack of readiness on the part of the student to take a dissertation to the next level of expression as a book.

Sometimes the needs of a subfield dictate that dissertations take forms that do not easily lend themselves tosubsequent publication as books. In the area of Islamic art, for example, one scholar noted that“dissertations far exceed book length. My dissertation was 1200 pages because the material hadnever been studied. Dissertations can rarely become books because the critical mass of scholarship is absent. My students’dissertations are overbuilt because they have to make a strong argument for colleagues in other fields.”

A pre-Columbian scholar observed that her field“publishes general books and scholarly articles, little in between. Monographs are very few and are often written mid-career.”Another scholar noted that the possibilities for scholarly monograph publication“depend on the field. Certain fields are saturated. In the last 10 years, Latin American [art]was very big but now there’s a glut and students can’t publish. [You have to ask,]‘Is there a need for a book in that area?’”

One scholar asserted that in modern art,“every dissertation can’t begin thinking it is going to be a book. Of the ten or fifteen of us who graduated with a Ph.D., I doubtthat five of us succeeded in publishing our dissertations as books. For the others, there is a huge flow into museum work andcuratorial work.”She continued,“There are students and then there are students. You want to encourage students [appropriately]. In modern, there are a lot of places to publish articles in electronicand print [formats]. It also helps to establish a student’s track record. Personally, I published 20 articles (many of them inexhibition catalogues), before publishing my first book. If you have a professor mentoring you and you’ve published articles, other people can write about what you’ve published.”