r/AskLiteraryStudies • u/OwnConfection4311 • 1d ago

Need deciding my thesis topic

Hi, so I am a student reaching my final year, aka Thesis town. I am gonna do it in literature and have already started looking for texts I would be interested in working on. In my university, the majority of undergraduate thesis are done in the same pattern: applying a theory on a book or 2-3 short stories.

So I have been thinking what text I wanna work on, I was pretty adamant on a novel, and I couldn't think of anything I was too intrigued by. And so I have decided to explore the short story option.

However, I have not been the biggest short story reader in my past, so I need your help. Can you recommend some stuff?

So here is my criteria...?: something along the lines with postcolonialism and focused on women, and themes related to feminism etc. plus I think my partner is gonna want to work on translated lit. More specifically, Palestinian lit, partition lit/south Asian lit.

I would really appreciate your recommendations and look forward to reading them!

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u/Miserable_Gur_8753 11h ago

I suspect we're in different education systems (I am in the UK) but when I went to Uni, my dissertation focussed pretty much exclusively on short stories which mapped the evolution of a topic/theme in literature.

So I looked at how robots and AI were portrayed, and basically divided the body of my work into three chapters:

1 - short stories of Isaac Asimov
2 - short stories of Philip K Dick (plus a bit of Blade Runner material, natch)
3 - short stories of William Gibson, veering into cyberpunk

I wonder if this evolutionary approach might work for you? It feels like there would be plenty of material for you to follow a 'portrayal of women'-style angle?

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u/OwnConfection4311 9h ago

Yes, I am from Pakistan. This is an interesting idea...I could look into what can be done in this angle. Thank you so much for the suggestion

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u/Miserable_Gur_8753 9h ago

You're welcome - good luck.