Research Design

1 Course Unit

This is a practical course on the challenges of designing research projects in anthropology with a special focus on the dissertation project. We will discuss how to select and refine a topic that is, ideally, important without being impossible. Interesting research can often be described or understood in multiple ways, and we will practice recasting project proposals for different kinds of audiences and formats. We will also consider issues of methodology, or the logic of method. Specific kinds of questions tend to lead to specific field and lab methods, and it is important to match your questions to your ways of answering them. This is not, however, a methods course. If you need to learn ethnography, ceramic analysis, textual analysis or some other set of methods, you should look for specific instruction in that field. Instead, we will consider how to assemble a research project that is well-structured, significant, and feasible using one or more analytical strategies. Research design is critical not only for planning research appropriate to your questions but also serves as the basis for successful proposals. Proposal-writing is a specific genre you will need to master; the final product for this course is therefore a research proposal. We will discuss the format of the proposal in detail. Not all proposals need to follow the same template, but there is a family resemblance to successful proposals; thus, although we will follow advice for writing scientific proposals, more humanistically- oriented students should not find this to be a problem. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit