The following is another item that I am re-posting from Futility Closet (www.futilitycloset.com). It is re-posted with the permission of Greg Ross, who maintains the site. You can have daily updates delivered to your e-mail each morning.

_______________

Unusual dissertation titles from the University Microforms International dissertation database:

Electrical Measurements on Cuticles of the American Cockroach

Determinants of Flossing Behavior in the College Age Population

Classification of Drinking Styles Using the Topographical Components of Beer Drinking

More Fun Than Anything (about cyclopropenium salts)

Creep of Portland Cement Paste

Garage Sales as Practice: Ideologies of Women, Work and Community in Daily Life (Volumes I and II)

Finger Painting and Personality Diagnosis

Communication Use in the Motorcycle Gang

“Santa Claus”: A Mime-Opera Based on The Morality by e.e. cummings

Ritual Drama in American Popular Culture: The Case of Professional Wrestling

Things That Are Good and Things That Are Chocolate: A Cultural Model of Weight Control as Morality

Acute Indigestion of Solipeds

The Making of a Hippie Self

Jock and Jill: Aspects of Women’s Sports History in America, 1870-1940″

An Adaptive Surfing Apparatus

The Function of the Couch in Stimulating Altered States of Consciousness in Hypnosis and in Psychoanalysis

I Am You, You Are Me: A Philosophical Explanation of the Possibility That We Are All the Same Person

You Can’t Just Plug It In: Integrating the Computer Into the Curriculum

One dissertation’s acknowledgment page read: Yes, Mother, I am finally done; and no, Mom, I don’t know what good a doctor’s degree is either if I can’t fix you when you’re ill.

(From a UMI press release, quoted in The Whole Library Handbook 2, 1995.)

_______________

My previous re-posts from Futility Closet have included:

“But Should It Cound toward Promotion and Tenure”: https://academeblog.org/2013/05/21/but-would-it-count-toward-promotion-and-tenure/

“Another Item of Ironic Scholarship from Futility Closet”: https://academeblog.org/2013/05/26/another-item-on-ironic-scholarship-from-futility-closet/

“Odd Library Subject Headings”: https://academeblog.org/2013/06/03/odd-library-subject-headings/

“Herein Lies Another Route to Madness”: https://academeblog.org/2013/06/07/herein-lies-yet-another-route-to-madness/

“How-To Books That Make One Wonder Why”: https://academeblog.org/2013/06/18/how-to-books-that-make-one-wonder-why/

“Higher Ed’s Version of the Great Imposter”: https://academeblog.org/2013/06/20/higher-eds-version-of-the-great-impostor/