Unusual dissertation titles from the University Microforms International dissertation database:

• “Electrical Measurements on Cuticles of the American Cockroach”
• “Determinants of Flossing Behavior in the College Age Population”
• “Classification of Drinking Styles Using the Topographical Components of Beer Drinking”
• “”More Fun Than Anything” (about cyclopropenium salts)
• “Creep of Portland Cement Paste”
• “Garage Sales as Practice: Ideologies of Women, Work and Community in Daily Life (Volumes I and II)”
• “Finger Painting and Personality Diagnosis”
• “Communication Use in the Motorcycle Gang”
• “‘Santa Claus’: A Mime-Opera Based on The Morality by e.e. cummings”
• “Ritual Drama in American Popular Culture: The Case of Professional Wrestling”
• “Things That Are Good and Things That Are Chocolate: A Cultural Model of Weight Control as Morality”
• “Acute Indigestion of Solipeds”
• “The Making of a Hippie Self”
• “Jock and Jill: Aspects of Women’s Sports History in America, 1870-1940”
• “An Adaptive Surfing Apparatus”
• “The Function of the Couch in Stimulating Altered States of Consciousness in Hypnosis and in Psychoanalysis”
• “I Am You, You Are Me: A Philosophical Explanation of the Possibility That We Are All the Same Person”
• “You Can’t Just Plug It In: Integrating the Computer Into the Curriculum”

One dissertation’s acknowledgment page read: “Yes, Mother, I am finally done; and no, Mom, I don’t know what good a doctor’s degree is either if I can’t fix you when you’re ill.”

(From a UMI press release, quoted in The Whole Library Handbook 2, 1995.)