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BLS 424/Topics in American Studies: Disability and the Body
Prof. Michael Goldberg
Sarah Leadley, Research Librarian
BLS 424: Topics in American Studies: Disability and the Body: Autumn 2001
Research Project:
Disability and the Body: Exploring the Relationship
Between Culture, Historical Context and Public Policy
I've described the process for developing your research project in the course syllabus and in supporting documents on the web site. This document explains more clearly the parameters and expectations of the project. Along with this document, you should also check out my Criteria for Writing and the two samples of student research papers that are available from the course web site.
The main goal of this assignment is to enable you to explore the relationship between cultural attitudes and assumptions ("discourse") on one hand and public policy on the other. You may choose to examine how discourse shapes policy, or policy shapes discourse, or the dynamic process that takes place between the two. In any case, your paper must also contain some historical context that explains the roots of both. "Policy" can be defined as any set of actions meant to establish institutional practices–these may include educational, occupational, legal, political, health/insurance institutions, among others. "Discourse" is defined as any set of practices and signs that communicate meaning. As explained earlier, in this course we recognize three basic kinds of discourse: cultural identity (gender, race, class, religion, region, dis/ability, etc.–both the larger categories and the subcategories within them); institutions (education, law, medicine, politics, academia, etc.); and ideology (social conservatism, environmentalism, liberal individualism, etc.). Ultimately, you should choose a research question that matters to you–not something that is obvious, but something that is highly charged, disturbing, or uncertain. Indeed, you may not find an "answer" to your question at all, but a better-defined set of questions that might be used to clarify the issue in a more productive way. The successful project will work to negotiate between the theoretical concerns raised within Disability Studies and the practical application of those concerns within the arena of policy.
Like most research projects, you will need to move from a broad topic to a more narrowed research question to a focused tentative thesis and then a final, focused and compelling thesis. Each assignment and workshop we have devised along the way is intended to help you organize your thoughts and research so that you are not simply generating piles of research with little notion of what to do with it. One advantage of this assignment is that you start with a broad problem or question from the start: how does discourse affect policy? How does policy affect discourse? How can a historical understanding of the issue shed light on either of the previous questions? Part of engaging in this process successfully is gaining efficiency in the way your coordinate your research, thinking, and writing. You might also find it helpful to clarify which specific discourses you will be exploring, either as you begin to conceptualize your project or as your develop your research. For example, you may decide to examine how the discourse within the middle-class Black community shaped community members' response to the Americans With Disability Act. We will give you the tools to integrate your research discoveries with your writing as you move from topic to question to thesis. This skill by itself if properly learned will be worth at least as much as the insights you gain from the content of the project itself. We will be modeling this process during Part 4 of the workshop on Oct. 19.
In order to make this a workable project within the time constraints of the course, you will need to make careful choices about where you will employ primary source research and where you will depend on secondary source research. Primary source research refers to material created at the time of the phenomena you are investigating which is not supported by scholarly research. Generally, this category refers to texts like media, letters, legal opinions, advertising, laws, census data, interviews, and the like. However, you may also treat scholarly work as primary sources if you are examining assumptions within the text (as Linton does) that the scholarship itself does not address. For example, you might treat a Psychology textbook as a primary source if you are examining the cultural attitudes of psychologists toward disability. A secondary source is a scholarly work (though not necessarily one produced within academia) that is engaged with the scholarly literature in its field and marshals evidence and logical argument to make its point. Scholarly works need to be assessed for their veracity and reliability. If you have not covered this process in a previous course, visit the following pages to gain useful insights on the questions to ask about primary and secondary sources:
Primary source workshop: http://www.bothell.washington.edu/faculty/mgoldberg/461primary.htm
Secondary source workshop: http://www.bothell.washington.edu/faculty/mgoldberg/461secondary.htm
In general, since secondary sources have already investigated primary sources as well as other secondary sources, they are less time consuming than primary source research. However, primary sources afford better opportunities to offer a fresh perspective and to analyze a topic more deeply on your own. Your prospectus provides a good time to allocate where you want to spend you research energies after you make an initial survey of the available material. We will discuss the assignment more next week.
Your analytical outline will provide you with the opportunity to demonstrate how you intend to use your evidence to create analysis leading to an argument that will prove your thesis. At this stage, your thesis will still be tentative, but it should be developed enough that you can articulate how the main points and subpoints connect to it. As you sketch out the points and subpoints, you should indicate which pieces of evidence (indicated by a number and/or letter relating to an index card or other data collection entity) will be used to establish them. This exercise will help you understand what points are sufficiently established, and which need further evidence to be included. It may also indicate that you have much more evidence in one area than others, and that you may want to expand and reorient that section while deleting or contracting a section. This exercise also allows you the opportunity to begin to organize your argument, making decisions on how to structure the overall argument (for example, whether to lead with the historical section, or use it as a subpoint somewhere) and where to place various points and subpoints in relation to each other to make the clearest possible argument. The outline is a draft, so you will be able to reorganize after receiving input from your group members and me. I have provided a sample analytical outline from another research course.
Writing is a collaborative process. Your work with your research group has been designed to provide you with peers who are examining similar topic areas, theoretical concepts, and methodological approaches. I also encourage you to discuss any ideas or questions you have with me or Sarah, or with tutors in the Writing Center, who will have been briefed concerning this project. This is not the kind of assignment that you can put off until the last few weeks (or days). You will be asked to produce work and assessments throughout the quarter, and your ability to keep pace with these assignments will greatly aid your performance and learning outcomes for this project.