Critical Methodologies

3 credits · Peabody College - Professional

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar explores the connection between epistemologies, modes of engagement, and qualitative research methodologies through readings, discussions, and workshops. Students will learn about a variety of engaged research approaches (including community-based participatory research, research as ceremony, research justice, and citizen science) and experiment with methods (such as interviews, discourse analysis, documentary video, and collective coding), examining the challenges and opportunities that "critical methodologies" present. To construct new ways of thinking about methods, we will also examine histories of Western knowledge production and how research became institutionalized. "The term, 'research,'" scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith writes, "is probably one of the dirtiest words" in the indigenous vocabulary. Some research approaches - from cartography to taxonomizing flora and fauna to measuring the bodies of racialized Others - have been (and continue to be) integral to imperial and colonial projects. Throughout the course, we will reflect on these legacies, the ethical issues they pose for social scientists today, and our positionality as researchers. What might a decolonization of research entail? How might research be used for healing, transformation, and mobilization? The class will function as a workshop space for students to advance and reflect on their own research projects. [3]