A UBC architecture student has pushed the boundaries of writing a doctoral thesis, constructing his 52,428 word thesis without punctuation.
Patrick Stewart, a member of the Nisga’a First Nation, recently defended his thesis to professors and a public audience. Titled “Indigenous Architecture through Indigenous Knowledge,” the 149-page thesis contained little to no punctuation. Stewart inserted the odd question mark, but conventional modes of punctuation and grammar, including capitalization, commas, semicolons and periods, were left out.
“I wanted to express the content in that people will have to be paying attention to what they are reading and not necessarily be hung up on grammar,” said Stewart. "The dissertation is about indigenous architects using cultural knowledge in their design process. That would be the purpose in the dissertation. The use of no punctuation? That would be an underlying subtext to the dissertation.”
According to Stewart, there are no rules that dictated the format that UBC theses could be written in.
“The intent was to try to get rid of the hierarchy of punctuation in the text and sort of democratize the writing by having none. So there were ... no capital nouns, no proper things like that," said Stewart.
Despite the unusual structure, the thesis passed.
“I was able to satisfy all the questions. The fact that it was a different format was less of an issue to everyone,” said Stewart.
Stewart did experience some roadblocks, however. The first obstacle arose when Stewart attempted to submit his thesis in the Nisga’s language. His supervisors, who asked that it be translated into English, rejected the thesis.
The Department of Graduate Studies also requested that Stewart write the abstract and the title page in standard academic English.
Stewart hit another roadblock upon submitting his application to the Behavioural Research Ethics Board. The board was unwilling to grant approval of the thesis, requiring it to be in standard academic English.
“If I didn’t get my BREB approval, that would be a bigger risk in that the university could refuse my research in the end,” Stewart said.
Stewart eventually submitted his application to the BREB in standard academic English, and it was approved.
Despite these setbacks, Stewart said that the committee that worked with him was “very supportive” and “didn’t have an issue with the formatting or content.”
One of Stewart’s goals moving forward includes bringing more First Nations students into the field of architecture.
“One of the chapters in my dissertation is a curriculum for a course on indigenous architecture and culture,” he said. “It’s something I’m interested in teaching.”
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