Doctoral writing in the visual and performing arts: two ends of a continuum

Doctoral degrees in the visual and performing arts are a fairly recent entrant in the research higher degree landscape in Australian universities. At the same time, a new kind of doctorate is evolving, a doctorate in which significant aspects of the claim for the doctoral characteristics of originality, mastery and contribution to the field are demonstrated through an original creative work. A substantial written contextualization is also generally required to clarify the basis of these claims. Managing the relationship between the written and creative components is a challenge for students and supervisors. The study reported on in this article examined the nature of the written component of doctoral degrees in the visual and performing arts submitted for examination in Australian universities, as well as the range of practices and trends in the kinds of texts that are presented in doctoral submissions in these areas of study. The study included a nation-wide survey of doctoral offerings in the visual and performing arts, the collection of a set of high quality doctoral texts, and interviews with doctoral students and supervisors. This article reports on two doctoral projects that can be seen to represent opposite ends of a continuum in the set of doctoral works that were examined.