Star Trek PhD Thesis Wins Academic Prize

An anonymous reader writes "A PhD thesis based on Star Trek has won an Australian university's top academic prize. Dr Djoymi Baker's 90,000 word dissertation 'Broadcast Space: TV Culture, Myth and Star Trek' was awarded the University of Melbourne's Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in the PhD. Dr Baker watched over 700 Star Trek episodes — more than 624 hours — to investigate the relationship between ancient mythology and today's popular culture. American academics thought her research was 'superlative' and suitable for teaching."

Comments

Proof

[elgee]

This just proves that PhD stands for "piled higher and deeper." Next year someone will win a prize for a dissertation on The Simpsons and how Homer embodies the best and worst of American men.

Re:Today's "true" myths

[Breakfast Pants]

'UFO religions like the Scientologists or heaven's gate.'

You forgot Christianity, Islam, Hindu, and many more religions.

Trek? Easy. Buffy? Now You're Hardcore

[RobotRunAmok]

Trek's been mined for college papers since Chekhov was in diapers. With -- what, 4, 5, six series, how many movies? -- from which to draw, you could prolly choose a thesis premise via a dartboard and still find enough material in the Star Trek mythos to hang it all on.

The real, industrial-strength pseudo-scholars who want to watch TV rather than crack a book turn their tight-leather-clad attention spans toward Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And I know from pop culture pseudo-scholarship: I once got an "A" in my "Structuralism and Semiotics" class with an exegesis of an Elric of Melnibone short story.

Ahhhh, college...