A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh. My major was in British Literature and my particular emphasis for my thesis was on the interwar period and the effects of WWI on the collective psyche of the generation of writers who watched their friends and comrades die in the trenches.

I would have loved to write my thesis on Wilfred Owen and the war poets because I was a 21 year old romantic obsessed with these talented poets cut off in the prime of their youth, but mine was a guided thesis and my advisor put the kibosh on it. Can’t quite remember why.

Fascism in academia

No…? Just the way my department did things every other semester. If I had done my thesis in the fall semester, I would’ve had more options for an independent thesis, but I opted for semester abroad instead.

Bet that was good.

It was! I got to spend five months in London, studying mid-20th century detective novels. It was rad.

Sounds fabulous

How interesting. I didn’t realize guided theses occurred outside of maths/sciences. I’m sorry you didn’t get to write what you wanted. Reckon it would have made the effort less arduous.

I actually had fun writing the thesis, even if I hated the book. My whole argument was that Waugh’s universally unsympathetic characters were a critique of the hedonistic 1920s and 1930s after the trauma of war. I was not particularly kind in my assessment of the novel’s success in this critique.

The trade off, at least at my university, was that guided theses were generally shorter and only needed to be defended to your thesis advisor and classmates rather than a whole bunch of professors. At least I got to write my thesis on all the terrible characters in the book…

I don’t care much for his work 🤷🏾‍♂️