I’ve been googling again…the things you do when you’re home convalescing, …this time "dissertatio + hic " has been the search string. I’ve found dissertations as recent as the 1850’s written in Latin.
I wonder when the last one written in Latin was submitted?
De adverbiis pronominalibus localibus latinis: Studia semantica et syntactica
by Palmen, Erkki, D.Phil., Jyvaskylan Yliopisto (Finland), 1998, 286 pages
Dilemmata moralia in diagnosi habita ante partum
by Cioffi, Alfredo, Th.D., Pontificia Universita Gregoriana (Vatican City), 1994, 373 pages
I exclude dissertations that equate to critical editions, which are probably not what you’re looking for.
The tradition of writing dissertations on classical subjects in Latin in countries like Germany extended well into the first part of the 20th century. Any Classicist, of course, could be expected to know Latin. In European countries with less well known languages (I think here especially of Poland, but the Netherlands and several others could probably be included as well) the tradition lived on even longer.
At least in Denmark, it is still formally allowed to at least defend your ph.d. thesis in Latin, but I doubt many theses have been written in Latin since Søren Kierkegård wrote the first thesis in Danish ever in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The trend nowadays seems to be writing every single academic dissertation in English… sigh. During the twentieth century, many Danish grammarians wrote theses on the Danish language in French. Sometimes the academic world can be hard for me to understand.
I know Oxford and Cambridge theoretically allow the submission of Latin dissertations…but nobody actually does anymore. I assume many other old colleges in Europe allow for it as well. Yet, practically, I’m not sure what would be done if someone slapped a Latin dissertation down on their advisor’s desk…though it may technically be allowed, I imagine that if your advisor or advising committee can’t read it, you’re not graduating.
Around here, they have the obligation of finding a way to read it, since it’s in the University’s Charter. You can also defend your thesis in Latin. If they don’t understand it, theoretically you can’t be blamed.
But who would be evil enough to use his knowledge of Latin to his advantage? 