Need help - choosing a Masters Thesis

[davidbfpo]

Areas that interest me the most are Afghanistan, American Revolution, American Civil War and Vietnam.

Maddog,

Looks like you have the answer already. The four wars can all be called civil wars, so what are the common factors and the lessons learnt: conflict resolution, SSR , conventioanl and unconventional etc. 'Fighting in civil wars: lessons from US history for Afghanistan'.

davidbfpo

PS Don't forget to add a few lines of introduction on the 'Tell Us Who You Are' thread: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...t=1441&page=52.

[George L. Singleton]

At the Command and Staff College level you have at hand the resources to do a bang up job on a new Masters thesis.

The WSJ journal article currently post here on SWJ on decentralizing Afghan governance via supporting the resistance efforts of village militias under the jiirga system might be compared to Revolutionary War America operating under a loose national "Confederation" which for purposes of a dynamic future American nation had to be shifted away from "state's rights" which is akin to the jiirga system in Afghanistan to what became our more centralized governance system.

To me as an old history and political science A&S student (undergraduate level) your topic could easily run away into a more complex doctoral dissertation...so governing and regularting the outline to keep it within your MA level of scope and scale will require your best skills, which I am sure you are up to.

Good luck, and I for one admire you openness in posting your intentions and interests and seeking comments here on and from SWJ participants.

George Singleton

[John T. Fishel]

You are prtty much where you need to be. You have a general area of interest, as David says, but you need to narrow it down. That is something for you to work out with your committee - chair and 2 members at least one of whom should have a PhD. Among the people you might consider talking to and as potential committee members or chairs are: Jim Willbanks and Chris Gabel in Mil Hist, Geoff Babb in DJMNO (or whatever we call it now), Geoff Demarest and Les Grau at FMSO, Rob Thornton at JCISFA (and of course this board), and, of course, Bob Baumann Dir, Grad Degree Programs. Talk with all of them about what you have in mind and ask for advice on committee members.

Good luck

JohnT

[selil]

Regardless of the topic you end up doing I take my grad students through a process of discovery to get to their final question. That being the really big leap. We deal in questions that need answering not topics.

I will usually have them write down on a piece of paper a whimsically chosen number of topics they like (25-50 depending on how evil I'm feeling). It really doesn't matter because they have to throw that one away (they don't know that so don't tell them). Then I have them do it again shooting for about 10 topics.

After that little exercise I ask them why are they interesting, what is important about them, what are the intersections between them, what do we know about them, what do we not know about them, what are the questions left unanswered, who drove the research on these topics, who are the main players in the area being studied, is there something special about these topics that cuts across other areas? Oh, and many more questions.

Then I make them write a prospectus tying it all together derived around a question. Usually the question is inelegantly tied around "who, what, where, when, why, how" or a derivative. That is fine. We are choosing a topic not writing the thesis. By now they have started a literature review. They never realize that but I am fine with the results. Upon completion of the topic research they usually refine the question. The question will become their research question, and then I usually have them form a hypothesis in formal language.

At this point they write the literature review.

Then they refine the question, refine the hypothesis. Kick themselves for missing a whole bunch of stuff.

Then they write their methods section. How are they going to study the problem.

Then they refine the question, refine the hypothesis. Kick themselves for missing a whole bunch of stuff.

And then, and only then, is the topic finished.

Of course, we throw all that out from time to time and do it totally differently. Every project, every student, every program is different.