'My undergraduate dissertation: Changing Trajectories of Wang Meng and Liu Binyan'

I’ve finally got round to uploading the final PDF copy of my undergraduate dissertation and making it available online. I’m making it public here not because I think it’s good, but for the usual reason I try to share a lot of things related to my studies. I would find it interesting to see other people’s work and read about their experiences, so I try to share mine online.

The full title of the dissertation is: “Conflicts of Ideals and Practice: Changing Trajectories of Wang Meng and Liu Binyan”. You can read the abstract and introduction in the document if you want to know more.

Download PDF: Changing Trajectories of Wang Meng and Liu Binyan Undergraduate Dissertation [255Kb]

I wanted to wait until it had been marked and our grades had been released, as I was slightly concerned the university’s automated plagiarism flagging software might spot the upload here and think it was someone else’s work.

I got 66 for the dissertation, so a fairly solid 2:i. We don’t get any feedback about individual modules, so I can only guess what cost me the extra marks to make it a first. My guess is that there isn’t a clear enough argument or any particular thread binding the whole thing together. Overall the dissertation feels more like my random train of thought about the authors than a rigorous analysis or argument.

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting for other people doing similar undergraduate dissertations to see what I did and see where I went wrong etc. Comments and criticism welcome as always (although I’m not expecting anyone to read the whole thing!).