The University of Denver Writing Program

The WRIT Committee sponsored two successful Conversations in the Disciplines panels last week, and we would like to thank the faculty members who attended and encouraged students to attend. Over 75 students came to each event and asked insightful questions after our colleagues from across campus presented their research and writing methods. Thanks to Richard and Rebekah, videos of these events will be available.

Kamila Kinyon graciously volunteered to write overview articles to share the events with those of you who couldn’t attend, and you should feel free to share these with your students.

Conversations in the Disciplines—April 12^th, 2011 by Kamila Kinyon

The first of two “Conversations in the Disciplines” panels featured University of Denver professors Bonnie Clark and Hava Gordon. Each scholar introduced her research in a brief presentation, followed by questions from the audience and lively discussion.

Anthropologist and archaeologist Bonnie Clark stressed the role of field journals and pencils, which she likened to digging tools in their central importance. Projecting an image of Indiana Jones to show people’s stereotype of archaeology, Dr. Clark emphasized that systematic record keeping is an equally important tool for understanding behaviors of the past; writing is vital throughout the process of archaeology. She traced the eleven year arc for her book on the La Placita Project, a late 19^th century Hispanic site in southeast Colorado. Clark’s initial research topics included use of space, daily life, and Hispanic identity in Colorado. She traced the chronology of her research process, including archival research, excavation, site survey, gaining approval to research the site, research design, and two years in the field with a field journal as a day-by-day narrative. She then discussed how research is prepared for dissemination, including conference papers, symposiums, and book-length monograms. In discussing writing style, Clark addressed the question of how reviewers respond to first person. In her own experience, one reviewer of her work liked the first person style while a second reviewer was put off by direct reference and use of the first person pronoun. Clark concluded by showing the long-awaited product of her work, the publication of On the Edge of Purgatory: Archaeology of Place in Hispanic Colorado.

Sociologist Hava Gordon then introduced her work in studying youth cultures and social movements. Dr. Gordon is interested in youth activism, the politics of silence, and agism. She has written ethnographies of anarchist youth collectives in Portland and Oakland. She worked with Black and Latino youths who were willing to let her attend and participate in their events as long as she promised to share her research with them. Gordon attended protests, rallies, and retreats. In describing her exhaustive field notes, she stressed that ethnography is such an inefficient research method because you don’t know what will be important later. Along with numerous “objective” observations, it is important to record emotional reactions that might later affect your interpretation. Gordon also stressed the importance of triangulating research with interviews. An additional method can lend an important lens for reading the data. Gordon’s interviews ranged from 45 minutes to 3 hours, and recorded beliefs, motivations, and struggles. After gathering extensive data, Gordon grouped this data under overarching themes and coded them. Such themes might include, for example, clashes with authority figures or alliances with adult figures. She would then storyboard the data on her living room floor with color coding for the different themes. She then outlined her writing process in revising journal articles into book chapters.

A series of questions followed these presentations. There was discussion of first versus third person for providing voice in ethnography. Hava Gordon saw first person as important, since as a white middle class woman there were limitations in the story she could gain from her fieldsite and interviews. It is important to balance objectivity and subjectivity. There are also disciplinary issues, since quantitative sociologists may look askance at subjectivity in ethnographic writing. To the question “Is one research method most popular and used in your field?” both Clark and Gordon responded that their fields were very interdisciplinary. To the question “How do you do a quick field project in an undergraduate class?” advice ensued about triangulating data, sketching maps, looking at space and movement, and changing focus frequently in order to engage all the senses. The discussion ended with a response to how photography, film, or illustration enhanced these researchers’ fieldwork studies. Gordon could not take photographs at her fieldsite, since this could have an adverse effect on her anarchist subjects, but Clark used photography extensively to record and document her fieldwork. Overall, this was an engaging evening. Through examples of their own projects, Bonnie Clark and Hava Gordon vividly exemplified the fieldwork process in sociology and anthropology and how they use different types of writing to support and share their research.

Conversations in the Disciplines—April 13^th, 2011 by Kamila Kinyon

The second of two “Conversations in the Disciplines” panels featured University of Denver professors Seth Masket, Danny McIntosh, and Joan Winn. Each scholar introduced his or her research in a brief presentation, followed by questions and a productive discussion.

Seth Masket, professor of Political Science, introduced his research of campaigns and elections. He has studied politics in Nebraska, which has the only non-partisan state legislature. However, with party polarization, it has become more partisan. This brings about an interesting puzzle. How did it become more partisan with no parties there? Dr. Masket described the ways in which his research process combines qualitative and quantitative methods. He initially conducted numerous interviews of Lincoln and Omaha reporters, legislators, activists, and leaders of parties. He later collected quantitative data regarding campaign donations. Data analysis revealed that there are partisan patterns in donations. Through the example of his personal research, Masket highlighted the typically mixed methods characteristic of Political Science.

Danny McIntosh then discussed two of his research interests. The first is the study of non-verbal communication, including facial expression and posture. This field tends to rely on psycho-neurological and numerical data. This research employs interviews and databases, and may include simple and inexpensive methods such as online questionnaires. Another of McIntosh’s major research areas is the study of religion and spirituality and effects on coping; most recently he has been working on a study of responses to the trauma of 9/11. Analysis of data showed that religious and spiritual individuals had better mental health and fewer diseases three years after the event. McIntosh further discussed his writing process in working as part of a collaborative team and producing written products for other members of the team. He stressed that writing makes you realize flaws in your logic, and that it is also a way of making thinking public and of providing interchange between authors. Unlike the typical undergraduate experience of trying to achieve a page length or word count, professional writing often involves cutting down the page length for articles which tend to be between 4,000-8,000 words. Finally, he stressed that audience matters. Papers are stories with a moral, and the message can be presented in different ways based on the ways that it is framed for an audience.

Joan Winn then introduced her research, which centers on case studies of businesses. Dr. Winn’s multifaceted research brings ethnographic methods to the study of business. One of her ongoing interests is the study of women entrepreneurs. For example, she has worked extensively on case studies in the Czech Republic, including a study of the fourth largest telecommunications company in the Czech Republic. This company is run by a woman who is married and has four children, including an elder daughter who works for the company. This scenario interests Winn since it diverges from the norm, in which women entrepreneurs are typically divorced women or women with no children. Winn highlighted some of her research methods in documenting the stories of these busy entrepreneurs. For instance, as a preface to later pointed interviews, she might give an interviewee a tape recorder and ask her to record her story while driving to and from work. Another interesting fieldsite for Winn has been Belarus. What is the role of the woman entrepreneur in a country where the government wants to control everything? She interviewed a woman who, following the death of her father and elder brother, has been running a company that produces wristwatch Geiger counters. Her story is an example of successful entrepreneurship under challenging social and personal conditions.

Following these three presentations, students asked several questions. One student was interested in the average length of research time. All three researchers were involved in lengthy projects, generally ranging from a minimum of one year to almost a decade. When you are dependent on other people for information, this further lengthens the research process. Another question regarded how often these researchers review other people’s work, and this was seen as a frequent responsibility. The panel productively illustrated the work of three dynamic researchers who use multiple research methods and genres of writing in their scholarship.