A New Generation of Doctoral Scholars Goes Beyond the Page

From video games to VR, ARHU doctoral students are expanding dissertation scholarship through digital and experimental work.

By Jessica Weiss ’05

When American studies doctoral student Christin Washington set out to explore themes of memory and spirituality, she knew a traditional, text-based dissertation wouldn’t suffice. To fully capture the lived experiences, spaces and rituals of Black women’s African-derived spiritual practices—like Obeah, Voodoo, Christianity and Rootwork—she needed to create something immersive.

Of the four chapters of her dissertation, which she will defend next year, one will be a 3D digital recreation of her grandmother’s house in Guyana, designed to be experienced in virtual or augmented reality. With additional sensory elements like sound and smell, she aims to transport her committee into the experience of Nine-Night—a Caribbean funerary tradition in which loved ones gather for nine nights to honor the deceased.

“Writing is still central,” Washington said, “but I think there’s something essential about feeling it as well.”

A Legacy of Innovation at UMD

While the traditional, chapter-based dissertation remains a cornerstone of humanities scholarship, a growing number of doctoral students in the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) are exploring new formats—video games, immersive websites, handmade objects, public humanities projects—to expand how research is created and shared. Advances in digital technology, along with increasing faculty support and a range of university resources—including specialized programs, funding, and dedicated spaces for creative and technical experimentation—are making it possible for students to integrate experimental approaches alongside traditional academic work.

“It’s sometimes hard for students to see this as a possibility since they’re still so surrounded by traditional academic culture,” said Matthew Kirschenbaum, Distinguished University Professor of English. “They don’t realize a dissertation can be something else entirely, and that this actually has a somewhat longer history than one might think.”

Kirschenbaum was an early pioneer. His 1999 dissertation at the University of Virginia, “Lines for a Virtual T[y/o]pography,” was one of the first-ever electronic humanities dissertations. After joining UMD in 2001, he helped shape MITH—the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities—into a hub for experimental digital humanities (DH) scholarship. MITH, located in Hornbake Library, provides students with the technical and theoretical support needed to explore digital methods, from text analysis to data visualization.

A decade later, Kirschenbaum would begin to mentor another pioneering digital scholar at UMD: Amanda Visconti Ph.D. ’15. Through their dissertation project, “Infinite Ulysses,” a participatory digital edition of “Ulysses,” users could highlight, annotate and interact with James Joyce’s famously difficult novel, creating a collaborative reading experience. Visconti then used coding, user testing and web design as core research methods of their dissertation, rather than mere supplements to a written document. The dissertation won the Graduate School’s 2016 Distinguished Dissertation Award. 

“Dr. Visconti’s work challenged the boundaries of what a humanities dissertation could be,” Kirschenbaum said. “All of the challenges involved were intellectually exciting; Dr. Visconti really ended up teaching the committee a lot along the way.” 

Now director of UVA Libraries’ Scholars’ Lab, Visconti has since consulted dozens of students pursuing digital dissertation work. Visconti emphasizes the importance of being surrounded by faculty and peers, as well as courses and spaces like MITH, to support and validate non-traditional scholarship.

“Being at MITH and working with DH scholars meant I got to see what good scholarship in the field could look like,” Visconti said. “It's enormously helpful to have mentors and a community who accept your work as valid scholarship.”

Pushing the Boundaries of Scholarship

In working to recreate her grandmother’s house, Washington is collaborating with faculty across multiple disciplines—including American studies, English, women’s studies, immersive media design (IMD), geographical information sciences and historic preservation. Last summer, with funding from a 2024 Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective grant, she traveled to Guyana with Assistant Clinical Professor Stefan Woehlke from the Historic Preservation Program to collect data and images of her grandmother’s house. Now based at AADHum and NarraSpaceXR, two campus makerspaces for digital experimentation and storytelling, she is using tools like virtual reality headsets, holographic displays and high-performance computing to create a sensory, immersive experience of the house—one that will be presented to her committee alongside traditional written chapters.

“So much of this work is about finding the right form—and sometimes, that means creating it from scratch,” she said. “My committee has been incredibly open to helping me develop a format that fully articulates the lived experience of Black women.”

Other students are also pushing the boundaries of dissertation formats. Lisa Abena Osei, a doctoral student in English, is designing an interactive game that immerses players in Afrofuturist and Africanfuturist worlds, inviting them to engage with alternative histories, technologies and narratives. (Afrofuturism broadly imagines Black futures through a diasporic lens, while Africanfuturism remains rooted in African cultures and histories.) Himadri Agarwal, another doctoral student in English, is also making a game as part of her project, using it to examine digital gaming and reparative game design practices. She will present a physical installation that people can interact with.

Not all experimental dissertations are digital. Nat McGartland, a doctoral student in English, is integrating textile art into her dissertation on visual media and data representation, crocheting data visualizations to accompany each chapter. The crocheted pieces serve to represent McGartland’s argument that human decision-making always infiltrates the collection, processing and presentation of data. Meanwhile, American studies doctoral candidate Kristy Li Puma is producing public events and digital humanities projects alongside the community members she interviews for her monograph dissertation on the history, politics and cultural practices of D.C.’s alternative and underground communities.

Preparing for the Future

Beyond redefining academic research and creative scholarship, Marisa Parham, professor of English, associate director of MITH and director of AADHum and NarraSpaceXR, said these projects are shaping the future of academic hiring, publishing and public engagement. For many students, the dissertation isn’t just a requirement—it’s a testing ground for the kind of work they may do beyond the Ph.D., whether in academia or beyond. And by working in non-traditional formats, students are developing a range of skills that go beyond traditional research and writing.

When working on digital projects, students are “working to collect hardware, navigating software licenses, even hiring people,” Parham said. “This means that working on the dissertation requires acquiring or honing management, planning and/or design skills that are clearly transferable, while also becoming a skilled researcher and thinker.”

Digital and experimental dissertations also have the potential to reach broader audiences. Unlike traditional monographs, which are typically read by a small group of scholars, these projects invite public engagement. That means students must learn how to communicate their work both to specialized academic communities and to non-experts—an essential skill for careers in and beyond academia.

For Washington, that means rethinking narratives about how Black women’s lives are understood and represented. She hopes to open up the digital elements of her dissertation to the public for viewing—allowing others to step inside it.

“My ultimate goal is for people to continue to understand the intimate and interior lives of Black women,” she said. “I’m hoping to contribute a piece of artwork and scholarship that does some of that work.” 

Photos by Lisa Helfert.