Comments on: What’s in a thesis title?

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:35:28 +0000

That’s probably the one I am tending towards, Dan, although there’s still a possible semantic confusion: civilian could just mean non-military and so include the government (Whitehall, Cabinet) … which I don’t!

I suppose it will go online as soon as it’s passed. (Touch wood.) The university has an e-publication thingy so it could go there for a start.

By: George Shaner

George Shaner — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:41:32 +0000

I dunno; I figure I’ll read the sanitized-for-the-public version.

I have no title suggestions, though the “How Britons…” would make a great subtitle for the book.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:19:20 +0000

I too think the last one is brilliant, and is definitely the short and sweet way of summing up the thesis. Of the ’sensible’ ones, I’d go for ‘The Next War in the Air: Civilian Fears of Strategic Bombardment in Britain, 1908-1941′, since that gets you out of having to discuss the military planning, and avoids a semantic debate about what ‘popular’ means. How soon after that will you put the thesis online ;-)?

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:37:06 +0000

I’m actually far too staid to pick that one :)

Yes, just written corrections. It’s a panel in name only, they’ll never be in the one place. In fact they almost certainly won’t even be from Australia (it’s anonymous so I don’t know who they’ll be). I’m not sure why we don’t have vivas here (I think some unis are introducing them) — perhaps because we only have a small academic community and are so far from everywhere else, that it would be too difficult to assemble a panel of experts in a given topic here in person.

By: Jakob

Jakob — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:19:28 +0000

I’d definitely go for your last one, but it depends on the sense of humour of your examiners…

If you have no viva, do you just get written corrections from the panel?

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:10:12 +0000

Thanks for all your suggestions! I’m persuaded that it is important to get it right (though at least we don’t have vivas here!) and I will have to fix it. I think that if I have to change that exact phrase and hence most of the reasons why I like it, there’s no need to replace it with something similar. I’m thinking something along the lines of:

The Next War in the Air: British Fears of Strategic Bombardment, 1908-1941
The Next War in the Air: British Popular Fears of Strategic Bombardment, 1908-1941
The Next War in the Air: Civilian Fears of Strategic Bombardment in Britain, 1908-1941
The Next War in the Air: Constructing the Fear of Bombing in Britain, 1908-1941

Or maybe I could go for this after all:

The Next War in the Air: The British People and the Bomber, 1908-1941

In general I’d rather avoid using the word ‘Britons’, it never looks quite right to me. But if I can’t think of anything better, I’m going to use the following!

How Britons Learned to Start Worrying and Really Fear the Bomber

By: Erik Lund

Erik Lund — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:13:50 +0000

Chris:

No, I’m not working on my prosopography right now. The Unsolicited Manuscript of Doom has taken me in different directions, and basically it’s a great folder of Proc.Inst.Mech.Eng. obituaries with lots of scratchmarks as I run through them eyeballing trends.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:28:49 +0000

‘…: The Bomber in British Imagination, 1908-1941′
Although that will get some pedantic examiner asking you if there can be such a thing as a national shared imagination, it reads more nicely than ‘… Britons’ imaginations of the Bomber, 1908-1941′.
I think it really is worth nailing down all this stuff. I spent a lot of my viva talking about whether it was possible to find historical ‘reality’ (rather than the research I’d done), because I didn’t take enough care in how I’d expressed myself.

By: JDK

JDK — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:20:50 +0000

Hey, I’ll read it, and I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, too!

And I’m also going to be here all week. Sorry.

Intriguingly, I also thought adding ‘fear’ into the title would add the missing ingredient, just as Jacob suggests. So…

‘The Next War in the Air: Britain and the fear of the Bomber, 1908-1941′
Or:
‘The Next War in the Air: Britons fear of the Bomber, 1908-1941′

Nearest I can get to a word for ‘fear’ beginning with ‘b’ is ‘dread’. Sorry.

It’s a grear displacement game, isn’t it? Works for me, too.

By: Don Smith

Don Smith — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:12:47 +0000

Bring both those ideas together and you have …
Britons’ fear of the Bomber?
Britain’s fear of the Bomber?