Thesis Guidelines
Your thesis is the most important part of your M.A. program. It will be the critical test of your success as a graduate student, and recommendations for further study or for employment will be based heavily on it. A main purpose of your courses is to provide the academic background and research skills necessary for a satisfactory research project.
There is a tendency for students to concentrate during the Fall and Winter terms on course readings and assignments, and to put off decisions about the thesis until late in the Spring term, resulting in the loss of the summer as a constructive research period. The effective definition of a topic demands a good deal of thought, reading and preliminary research; it cannot be done quickly and therefore must be begun early.
Faculty also need to know their commitments in advance. Students trying to define a topic during the summer, without having secured the prior agreement of a supervisor, are apt to find that no one is available until September. It is considered normal to complete the M.A. with a thesis in Art History in fewer than six terms, but only if a topic and supervisor have been arranged and serious work on the thesis or research essay proposal has begun well at the end of first year.