The dissertation adviser's task may be to give advice, but his or her approval is required for the thesis to pass and the degree to be awarded. It is the graduate student's dissertation, but the imprimatur belongs to the dissertation adviser, so perhaps the process belongs to both of them. But that equation leaves out some other important actors, namely the other members of the dissertation committee. Usually ranging from two to four members in addition to the adviser, the committee also confers approval of a dissertation, and the group's approval is just as necessary. What is the role of the committee compared with that of the adviser? The answer is not at all clear. While all faculty members have power over students, they also have unequal amounts of power among themselves. And that imbalance can cause problems. The imbalance is highly field-specific. In the laboratory sciences, the adviser owns the means of production of the thesis. Students work in their advisers' labs and are financed by their grants. The student's name goes on any publications that result from the experiments done there, but so does the adviser's. The dissertation, usually a collection of experimental results, goes out under the student's name, but it is thoroughly underwritten by the adviser's money. Given that setup, one might expect the committee's role to be limited--and it usually is. Members of dissertation committees in the sciences offer typically broad oversight to the work that the adviser is managing in detail in the laboratory. For committee members to get closer than that would risk the appearance of meddling in a colleague's financial affairs. The humanities are organized quite differently. Doctoral students are usually financed on the departmental level, either through stipends or compensation for undergraduate teaching. The adviser has no financial stake in the student's dissertation work, and the adviser's name appears nowhere within any publications that result--except maybe in the acknowledgments. Instead, the adviser's investment in the student's research takes the form of time. A good adviser in the nonlaboratory fields will read multiple drafts of a dissertation and meet with the student often. But when a dissertation reaches the end of the line in the nonlab fields, the adviser's stake in the student's work is intellectual and emotional--and it is usually considerable. In nonlab fields, too, the committee does less than the adviser. Advisees may, as a rule of thumb, count on each committee member for one close reading of each chapter. Further readings by committee members will be more cursory, more in the nature of ratification than detailed engagement.