Video Infoblog: The Thesis that Killed Academia?
T his is a brief comment on the recent social media episode in which a young woman attracted a lot of attention by graduating with a thesis on olfactory suppression in English prose. In this video, I try to put these events into context. I find it difficult to wrap my head around the sudden outrage. Let me know what you think about this. 0:00 Have you heard of the woman who wrote her PhD 0:03 thesis on olfactory oppression in the English literature? If not, 0:09 you’ve missed what might have been the straw that broke the back of academic research. 0:14 This is the story of a British woman who graduated at Cambridge University in 0:19 English Literature. At the end of November, she cheerfully announced her graduation on X-twitter 0:25 but I doubt she expected what came next. Her thesis is titled “Olfactory Ethics: 0:31 The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose” and according to the abst...