The Dissertation as a multi-genre: Many readers, many readings

Since most academics have completed a dissertation, it is ironic that the genre is such an under-theorized, under-studied, and under-taught text (Rose & Mc- Clafferty, 2001; Lundell & Beach, 2002; Kamler & Thomson, 2006). Perhaps, like childbirth, it is best forgotten; more likely, as Bazerman’s comment above suggests, the linguistic and rhetorical complexities of the dissertation are simply inexpressible for most academics. Unfortunately, doctoral students are often in desperate need of help with their dissertations, and yet, when Kamler and Thomson (2006) searched the literature, they found a “relative scarcity of welltheorized material about doctoral supervision and writing” and remarked that “doctoral writing was a kind of present absence in the landscape of doctoral education. It was omething that everyone worried about, but about which there was too little systematic debate and discussion” (p. x). Our focus in this chapter is on the supervisory dyad and the collaborative relationship between doctoral students and their advisors. We see the dyad as a critical dynamic in the student’s apprenticeship in disciplinary consciousness, identity, and discourse, and we set out to discover what occurred in supervisory sessions, especially when writing was the topic