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It looks like everyone has it's own theories on what's the function of a defense. People say that it has to be a contribution to knowledge, other people say that it has to reflect 3 years of work, other say that it has to be a work of publishable quality. Given that "contribution to knowledge" is kinda a difficult ground to judge for some humanities, how are examiners approaching a PhD defense in the humanities?

TakeMeToTheMoon
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    The PhD defense is the « contribution to knowledge » or the PhD thesis? – Solar Mike Jun 15 '18 at 13:51
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    I'm pretty sure that the purposes of the defense is to 1. Make sure that the candidate actually wrote the thesis (thus the questions at the end) and 2. Have some kind of ceremony to celebrate a big accomplishment with your friends and family. –  Jun 15 '18 at 13:53
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    None of these sound like what the defense is about, but instead what the thesis should be. – Tobias Kildetoft Jun 15 '18 at 13:55
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    Are we talking about the oral exam defending the thesis, or the corpus of work done during the PhD? – aeismail Jun 15 '18 at 14:20
  • Possible duplicate of What questions to prepare for PhD defense? In particular, see the first answer that explains the two major variants of PhD defenses. – henning Jun 15 '18 at 14:46
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    @Luca Are you asking what type of work is worth a PHD, or what is the defence (the “oral examination”) for? Please clarify. If the latter, It seems a good philosophical question - to which I do not have a good answer! – famargar Jun 15 '18 at 16:58
  • Hi all. Sorry, after 2 months since my PhD failure ("resubmit") I had again a moment in which I was wondering what had gone wrong, given that I only received positive feedback during my viva and was generally given the motivations: "it has be a contribution to knowledge" and "objective of a PhD is to create a publishable work" - reviews very loose, in which these two critics moved to me were not substantially explained (on the opposite, it's written that the work is very clear and well written). – TakeMeToTheMoon Jun 15 '18 at 17:19
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does If a system has been around for a long time, and nobody has hated it enough to change it, then the results of that system are sufficiently good, or insufficiently bad, to cause them to act. So the purpose of the system is what it does. PhD defenses give professors employment. – puppetsock Nov 20 '19 at 15:18

2 Answers2

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The ‘defense’ is part and parcel of the work itself. Typically you must first produce some novel work, and at the very end, you must ‘defend’ this work in an act of oral discourse. The defense is mostly a rite of passage in most disciplines. Your advisor and committee usually won’t let you get that far if the work is sub par and you’re likely to ‘fail’. Officially, you must be able to speak intelligently about the work and address criticisms on the fly, proving your scholarship and deep knowledge.

Zoey RW
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HEITZ
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Because there are so many different disciplines and educational systems, there is no universal definition of what constitutes either sufficient work for a PhD or constitutes a successful defense.

That said, the “original work of scholarship” connotes that the PhD candidate has produced something that is new at the time of the defense. In the arts, for instance, is an exhibition of sculptures or paintings “publishable?” That depends greatly on your definition, but it would unquestionably represent something original.

The goal of the defense is also quite variable, depending on local policies and culture but is usually regarded as a vehicle for demonstrating mastery to an audience by allowing for questioning of the candidate.

aeismail
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