Now that we’ve discussed the benefits and risks of thinking about methods rigorously, systematically, capaciously, and promiscuously, let’s consider how that exploration and experimentation can — and should — be driven by our epistemological and ethical commitments, perhaps even by values contrary to the predominant “operating principles” of our field and of higher education as a whole. How might we choose or design methods for conducting, expressing, and sharing our work that reflect the values central to our own practices — and the values that could define how research circulates within and informs the broader intellectual landscape and our social and material worlds? We’ll conclude today’s class by exploring the material forms our research can take, which will prepare us to begin conceptualizing our class’s collaboratively authored open-access methods toolkit.
WORKSHOP / VISITOR, 5:00-6:30pm: Cosette Bruhns Alonso, Contemporary Publishing Fellow, Penn Libraries. Among the questions we’ll ask today is what form research should take – and what commitments and values should drive those decisions. Dr. Bruhns Alonso will introduce us to multimodal research and the various resources at Penn, and beyond, that can support non-traditional, experimentally formatted work (later this semester we’ll talk more about writing and publishing). Over the next few months, we’ll be using one such multimodal platform to collaboratively create our own Methods Toolkit; we’ll introduce that project today.
REMINDER: Please remember to sign up for your liaison group! 🙂
TO READ FOR TODAY:
Valuing Ethics + Accountability:
- Skim the contents of Ron Iphofen and Martin Tolich’s SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Ethics (SAGE, 2018).
- Skim through the University of Pennsylvania’s Human Research Protection Program site — particularly the Guidance for Student Researchers in Social Behavioral Research. Contrast this approach to “ethics review” with Liboiron’s concern with “right relations.” If you’re interested to know more about the critiques of traditional institutional review boards, check out our Arena channel Institutional Review Boards.
Valuing Public Engagement and Inclusivity:
- These are among the concerns that inspire multimodal scholarship, which we’ll address with Cosette Bruhns Alonso today. We’ll also talk about citation politics and public and open scholarship in our lesson on writing and publishing in a few weeks.
Valuing Environmental Stewardship:
- See the DIY Methods project and the Low-Carbon Methods Research Group.
Valuing Diverse Forms of Knowledge Production:
- Shannon Mattern, “Forms of Scholarship: Multimodal,” Words in Space (2010). [When I have more time 😫, I’ll incorporate more of these newer resources, which you needn’t read but are welcome to skim].
- Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe, “Natalie Loveless,” Cultures of Energy [podcast] 184 (July 4, 2019): start @ 13:00. Loveless is the author of How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation (Duke University Press, 2019).
- Emily Esten, “Parsing Process,” CommonPlace (April 5, 2023), which is published on the PubPub platform.
- Check out Penn’s Price Lab for Digital Humanities (with whom we’ll meet on October 4), Penn Libraries’ Research Data & Digital Scholarship resources and Education Commons (crafting and makerspaces), and CAMRA, the Collective for Advancing Multimodal Research Arts, here at Penn.
Especially for PhD Students: Valuing a More Pluralistic Academic Trajectory:
- Katina L. Rogers, Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and Beyond the Classroom (Duke University Press, 2020): especially “Expanding Definitions of Scholarly Success,” 57-75; “Students: How to Put Your PhD to Work,” 101-27; and “Ten Ways to Begin,” 131-6.
- Stacy M. Hartman and Bianca C. Williams, “The Future of Doctoral Education: Four Provocations for a More Just and Sustainable Academy,” Los Angeles Review of Books (May 29, 2023).
- Skim through the syllabus for my 2022 Redesigning the Academy course.