This course is a part of HF's PhD week.
Course description
How to “do” research at the deep end of the qualitative methodology spectrum? What does it take—as a researcher and as a human being—to investigate sensitive or taboo subjects, or minority- and stigmatized groups? How to capture what is hidden or what, instead, seems too obvious (to the untrained eye) to be interesting in the first place? How to write or talk about phenomena that evade words, let alone the rigid conventions of academic writing?
This course deals with the unique challenges that ethnography, autoethnography and phenomenology (including peer- and participatory research) face in balancing the systematicity of scientific investigation with capturing the sensory, embodied, situated and emotional side of human (and non-human) reality. It aims to counter common misconceptions that tend (wrongly) to see qualitative research as “casual” or “not generalizable.” Its aim is to train PhD candidates who conduct rigorous research while breaking the mold of traditional (often outdated) conventions and creatively engaging audiences.
Writing has an important role in this course: writing in the form of ethnographic notes and thick description is not only an essential aspect of the methods we will be covering. It is also a crucial component of creating new knowledge about invisible or hard-to-reach phenomena and worldviews: because the experiences being investigated are often invisible, hidden, misunderstood or (more or less consciously) avoided by the “majority” because they are perceived either as too mundane or too deviant from “normality,” being able to craft a shared experience with the reader/audience is key to both engagement and genuine, deeper understanding.
Writing for this purpose often demands a different kind of expression than what is expected from academic conventions: creative or evocative writing, poetry, experimental writing, only to name a few examples. Discussing the dilemmas that emerge when we are trying to write and communicate our research without losing its scientific character is thus also a central concern of the course.
This is a 2 ECTS course.
Course preparation
All candidates are required to send, by 8 May (4 weeks in advance of the course), the following materials (to be submitted in a single file):
- Outline of project: A max. 2 pages statement containing your research question, how you plan to address it, and a challenge/dilemma related to your work you would like to find clarity about and/or receive feedback on.
- Writing sample: This should be a substantial text (maximum 5,000 words; PhD candidates at the beginning of their PhD are allowed to submit a shorter text) that presents your data/observations/findings. It should be a text you are already working on as part of your PhD, where you are presenting the lived experience you are or have been investigating and that showcases your writing. It should be related, in other words, to the phenomenological part of your work (i.e. please do not send your “theory chapter”).
- Recommended reading: Three sources (book chapters, articles…) that address an aspect, dilemma, challenge that you find particularly relevant to your project. These sources, suggested by each participant, will be collected into a “recommended reading” list and shared with all participants 2 weeks before the course at the latest.
Course participants are required to read about 100 pages of “mandatory reading” and select at least 100 more pages from the list of “recommended reading” in addition to the sources they have themselves suggested. They are also expected to have read the project outlines and writing samples of all other participants.
Reading
Mandatory reading (select about 100 pages. They have to include the compulsory reading of Nagel (1974). In the case of edited books or books you might select chapters that you find most relevant to your project)
COMPULSORY Nagel, Thomas (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review 83(4): 435-450. An old but influential (and provocative) text about one of the key issues the course deals with: how to convey the experience of “the other”?
It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one's mouth; that one has very poor vision, and […] that one spends the day hanging upside down by one's feet in an attic. […] it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat (Nagel 1974: 439, his emphasis).
Abram, David (2017). The spell of the sensuous; Perception and language in a more than human world. New York: Vintage Books.
Archetti, Cristina (2022). Researching experience in journalism: Theory, method, and creative practice. Journalism Studies. 23(8), 974–997.
Archetti, Cristina (2015). Journalism, practice and…poetry: The unexpected effects of creative writing on journalism research. Journalism Studies. ISSN 1461-670X. 18(9), s. 1106–1127.
Archetti, Cristina & Eeg-Tverbakk, Camilla (2022). Enabling knowledge: The art of nurturing unknown spaces. Nordic Journal of Art and Research (A & R). ISSN 2535-7328. 11(1).
Ash, James and Paul Simpson (2017). Postphenomenology and Method: Styles for Thinking the (Non)Human. GeoHumanities 5(1). Available here.
Bochner Arthur P. and Carolyn Ellis (2016). Evocative autethnography: Writing lives and telling stories. Abingdon: Routledge.
Ellis, Adams and Bochner, Arthur (2011). View of autoethnography: An overview. Qualitative Social Research 12(1): 1-18.
Frank, Arthur (2013). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness and ethics. London: University of Chicago Press.
Gay, Roxane (2021). Writing into the wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language. Scribd Originals.
Holman Jones, Stacy, Tony Adams and Carolyn Ellis (2013). Handbook of autoethnography. Abingdon: Routledge.
Light, Ben, Jean Burgess, and Stefanie Duguay (2016). The walkthrough method: An approach to the study of apps. New Media & Society 20(3) 881–900.
Livholts, Mona (2020). Situated writing as theory and method. Abingdon: Routledge.
Muncey, Tessa (2010). Creating autoethnographies. London: Sage.
Pandian, Anand and Stuart McLean (eds) (2017). Crumpled paper boat: Experiments in ethnographic writing. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Vannini, Phillip (2020). Non-representational methodologies. London: Routledge.
Recommended reading
[to be added here 3 weeks before the course]
In class
An initial overview of the basics of phenomenological methods and their implementation in the context of a PhD project will be followed by guided discussion of the participants’ individual projects and their respective challenges. To get the most benefit from the discussion all participants are expected to read each others’ project outlines and writing samples, as well as having done the preparatory reading.
Professor in Political Communication and Journalism Cristina Archetti will facilitate the discussions.
Language
The course language is English, including reading responses and essays.
Registration
Course is fully booked. Please email research adviser Elisabeth Hoff to be put on the waiting list.
Course Convenors:
Contact person: Cristina Archetti
IMK, responsible Department