by Raul Pacheco-Vega: http://www.raulpacheco.org/2018/08/how-to-write-a-thesis-umberto-eco-my-reading-notes/
I sometimes eschew book recommendations even though I have an intuition that these may actually work for my purposes.
A number of scholars had recommended to me that I should check Umberto Eco’s How to Write A Thesis whose 2015 reprint was published by The MIT Press, particularly since I’ve been reading a lot of books on how to do a doctoral dissertation (mostly for my own students, but also to help others globally). As I mention in my tweet below, I’ve never been a fan of Eco’s, so I was a bit skeptical. I take my skepticism back.
Everybody and their mother has recommended to me that I read Umberto Eco’s How to Write a Thesis. Frankly I was skeptical, particularly because I didn’t love “The name of the rose”, but I figured I had read Stephen King’s “On Writing”, so I might as well do this one.
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I’m really pleasantly surprised that so much of Eco’s book is focused on avoiding plagiarism. I’ve had my work plagiarized by students and professors alike, and it’s something I’m really angered by, so glad someone out there is paying attention to the issue from a teaching view.
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I am, very much like Eco, very critical of people who don’t use direct sources (hence my emphasis on language training and mastery when dealing with comparative and cross-country research). I enjoyed how he discussed this issue in HTWAT.
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This is where Eco is useful both for book manuscript-type PhD theses and for post-PhD writers. He takes pains to explain different ways in which the table of contents acts as an outline and how we can develop different models of outlines.
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I melt. I have used physical index cards, I teach my students how to write index cards for their theses but I never had typed them. Umberto Eco typed his index cards (and classified them in various types). His attention to detail and citation is fundamental and important.
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After reading Umberto Eco’s book, I think I agree: yes, PhD students should read his book How to Write a Thesis.
Aimed at Italian students and the Italian model of a PhD, his adaptation and translation into English is super useful. I imagine it would be useful to Spanish speakers too (the Spanish version of course). I will be recommending it to my own doctoral students.
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