This past Wednesday, I met with my mentor for about an hour to discuss my research interests. My mentor, Dr. Hardig, is also a research methodology professor. So, we spent the meeting discussing the different ways he guides his students on finding their research puzzles. While I am still struggling to decide on a particular topic, I have a more clear idea.
After my mentor read my first research progress post, he said that I might be more interested in interpretivist methodologies. My mentor said to still keep an open mind but from what he could discern from my first blog post, my research interests lean towards interpretivism. We discussed how there may be some merit in first deciding what types of knowledge (neo-positivist vs interpretivist) interests me more before settling on a topic. Trying to think of my research interests in this way helped a lot and I was able to cross off some ideas.
Another tip he offered to help me decide on a research project is to consider what is feasible and what is not. When I think of my original research question, I know one major obstacle could be the language of the primary source documents. I also realized how some of the interpretivist questions I want to ask could be better answered with ethnography. As a result of time and limited resources, an ethnography could be difficult.
The way Dr. Hardig explained discourses to me made me realize I am more interested in finding out how people come to understand ideas. From his explanation, I understand discourse analysis to be about finding how people come to understand social reality and how that understanding is influenced or changed overtime. I know a discourse analysis may be more accessible to me but the language barrier could still be an obstacle.
I think our meeting was very productive and I did leave with a few next steps. Dr. Hardig suggested I pay close attention to the articles concerning interpretivist methodology included in the class syllabus. He also proposed that I write down the questions I have for each topic to help decide which puzzle to research. I also decided a good next step would be to do some more preliminary research on feminisms in the middle east to identify which branches of feminist thought I will focus on. Hardig mentioned that there are two main groups of feminists: secular and Islamist.
I am still not sure if I should stick to the topic I originally proposed. I know regardless of topic I am interested in looking at discourses. My major concern is identifying what exactly will I study. I understand that is a major part of the process of research but it can be hard to embrace this level of uncertainty.
Overall it sounds like you had a productive and thought-provoking meeting with your faculty mentor. I look forward to seeing how the research develops!