LibGuides: Theatre: Dissertations and Theses

Dissertations, Theses, and Reports From UT Austin

The UT Libraries collects dissertations, theses, and master's reports written by UT Austin students. Please note that it can take up to a year after the graduation date for copies to be received.

Dissertations from 2001-present and theses from 2010-present are available electronically. Print copies are available of older items.

The most comprehensive list of UT Austin dissertations, theses, and reports is available in the library catalog. In the Advanced Search option, you can limit the resource type of results to dissertations. You may have to scroll down in the drop down menu to see all options.

For items from 2008-present, you can also search within the Texas ScholarWorks digital repository.

Texas ScholarWorks This link opens in a new window
Most current edition. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Holds digital works and provides related services that constitute an institutional repository for the University of Texas at Austin. Archives and provides persistent and reliable access to the digital works of faculty, staff, and students and aims to provide the greatest possible dissemination and recognition to these works as possible. Digital works include research and scholarship, as well as works that reflect the intellectual and service environment of the campus.

Dissertations, Theses, and Reports From Other Institutions

To find dissertations, theses, and master's reports from institutions other than UT Austin, try searching in the Dissertations and Theses; Full Text database or Google Scholar. If the full text is not available online, contact Interlibrary Services for assistance in locating a copy.

Dissertations and Theses Global This link opens in a new window
Contains more than 2 million doctoral dissertations and master's theses. Provides full text for many dissertations and theses, including most done after 1997. All subject areas are covered.
Updated monthly. Contains more than 2 million doctoral dissertations and master's theses. Provides full text for many dissertations and theses, including most done after 1997. All subject areas are covered. The database includes more than 90 percent of the doctoral dissertations accepted each year in North America with selective coverage for other parts of the world. Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts. Only bibliographic citations are available for earlier years. More than 55,000 new citations are added to the database every year. Many dissertations from The University of Texas at Austin are included in the database, though theses from the University are only rarely included.

ProQuest recommends using Firefox, IE or Safari for your browser for this resource.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Searches digital repositories of universities. Many full text dissertations and theses available.
Google Scholar uses the popular Google search engine to enable searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. It includes a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Google Scholar includes full text and citations.
Use this link to access Google Scholar, and see our Google Scholar Guide for information on using this resource.
If you encounter a warning about the security certificate when using the FindIt@UT tool in Google Scholar, you can learn more about that using this guide.

Dissertation Reviews
Users can read reviews of over 1,000 dissertations in the humanities and social science fields from around the globe. In each review, an early career scholar in the field outlines the dissertator's main argument and sources and discusses how the dissertation fits into the field's existing body of scholarship. Visitors to this website can search for dissertation by institution or academic subject.

Open Access Theses and Dissertations This link opens in a new window
site links to nearly 2 million dissertations from North America and Europe, both a place to browse and to look for specific title/author
OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes 3,452,088 theses and dissertations.
WorldCat.org This link opens in a new window
catalog of library holdings worldwide
Updated continually. Provides access to the world's most comprehensive bibliography, with over 49 million bibliographic records for audio-visual materials, books, maps, musical scores, newspapers, and periodicals in 370 languages and covering information from 4,000 years of knowledge. Many of the holdings for materials at the University of Texas Libraries are included, as well as holdings for other libraries in Texas, the United States and worldwide.

International

Theses Canada: access to full text Canadian theses and dissertations in the Library and Archives Canada collection
Australasian Digital Thesis Program: database of theses and dissertations from Australian and New Zealand universities
Ethos.bl.uk: an index to theses and dissertations from United Kingdom institutions of higher education, charges for downloads

List of additional databases

Dissertation Express

Dissertation Express (direct via ProQuest)
If you quickly need a print copy of a dissertation that is not available for download and don't mind paying the full cost yourself, you can order it directly from Proquest's Dissertation Express as an individual. Otherwise, you may want to look into borrowing via Interlibrary Loan.