Workshop: Skits, sketches, and sculptures
This is that space in the semester where you get to borrow or invent and apply your own creative research methods. I can’t tell you how. That’s up to you — and dependent on your research question(s). Think about the examples I’ve given you already.
Also, you can email me if you are wondering where to start, tell me what sorts of non-traditional, creative, imaginative, arts-based data could, maybe, be useful to you, and then I will brainstorm possible methods alongside of you. As you invent and borrow, my only ask is that you make sure your methods are ethical — especially if you are involving animals, including humans.
As a series of steps, your research for this module should look more or less like the following:
Step 1: Choose what type of non-traditional, unique, or out-of-the-box data could be useful to you.
You can choose to ask people around you to create visual data, for example (photos, sketches, sculptures, or short videos are obvious choices). You can choose to record audio clips or to document smell or taste sensations, etc.
Step 2: Go get your data.
Example of what this might look like: if you are studying culturally specific understandings of success, you could ask people around you as well as friends/contacts abroad to make quick sketches of whatever they think of when they hear the word “success.” These sketches become your tailored-to-your-project data set, to be analyzed by you, just like you would analyze Instagram posts or a some photo archive housed online.
Step 3: Analyze your data.
Scroll, click, skim, flip, surround yourself in, etc. the data you have collected. Look for patterns. Look for content relevant to your project — anything that might inform your and your future readers’ thinking.
Step 4: Tell us what you found.
In 1–5 sentences, describe anything you’ve discovered this week that can be of use to you.*
*If you cannot find anything useful in your data, write the word “nothing” as your answer to step 4, and I will reach out to you to see if I can help.
