MENTOR MEETING II

On Wednesday, December 5, 2018 I met with Dr. Susan Shepler for about twenty minutes. I explained my present struggle with deciding whether to embark on an official discourse analysis, as I originally planned, or to follow the nagging thoughts I have been experiencing, telling me to develop a popular discourse research project. Dr. Shepler explained how she, as an ethnographer, decides what puzzles to chase. Ethnographers, she said, become anthropologists of one particular place. She began studying Sierra Leone as a Peace Corps volunteer and has returned several times to solve more puzzles and further understand her place of interest. Though I have not chosen to perform an ethnography, Dr. Shepler advised me to follow whatever direction passion pull me- whether that be the reproduced meanings found in popular or official discourse.

On a more concrete note, Dr. Shepler advised me to read books on feminist methodology to guide my methodology before and during my research project in SISU-306. In particular she suggested three books: Doing Feminist Research In Political and Social Science, Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers, and Feminist Methodologies for International Relations.[1] Prior to the meeting I had read quite a few pieces of feminist research, many of which helped me form my “buckets” for my literature review. However I had not seen feminist research as a form my own project could take. Though I knew intimate partner violence to be a feminist issue, I believed my project to be moreso a legal or social analysis rather than a feminist one (although feminism is a branch of social theory). While I initially found my identity as a researcher and as a feminist to be separate entities, this discovery has lead me to further understand the notion of reflexivity which will allow me to better develop my paper. Originally I had examined my Italian identity as the foremost important element to my reflexivity, as I am one with the Italian history, language, and culture and I am examining. However my feminist identity is yet another element that in fact is just as significant as it not only provides me a certain lens with which I understand phenomenon, but through my research it will connect me to past and future feminist scholars, thinkers, and activists.

NOTES

[1] Ackerly, Brooke, and Jacqui True. Doing Feminist Research in Political and Social Science. 2010 edition. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave, 2010; Sprague, Joey. Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers: Bridging Differences, Second Edition. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2005; Ackerly, Brooke, Maria Stern, and Jacqui True. Feminist Methodologies for International Relations. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ackerly, Brooke, and Jacqui True. Doing Feminist Research in Political and Social Science. 2010 edition. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave, 2010.

Ackerly, Brooke, Maria Stern, and Jacqui True. Feminist Methodologies for International Relations. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Sprague, Joey. Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers: Bridging Differences, Second Edition. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2005.