Megan Little's Instructor Page

What do you think of when you hear the word “research”? Stacks of books in libraries? Clinical settings and labs? In this class, we’ll learn more about another important kind of academic research: learning from the living.

By “learning from the living,” I don’t mean taking your mom’s advice or seeking out good mentors (although, these can be sound practices). I mean interviewing, observing, and interacting with human subjects to create new knowledge about human behavior and culture—-perhaps the most complex of all topics.

This is precisely what people do in an array of academic disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, education, psychology, medicine, linguistics, and well, rhetoric. And (not surprisingly) there are vastly different ways to do this kind of research. One is to design experiments that control certain variables so a researcher can establish predictable, reproduceable results. Another is to interview subjects about their recollections and feelings about an event or experience. Another is to designate a person, place, or phenomenon as a “case study,” which means using a single instance to make tentative and often theoretical observations about a broader concept. And, yet another approach is to immerse oneself in an aspect of a culture as much as you possibly can, gathering multiple kinds of evidence around the same phenomenon, ritual, or behavior, and then interpret it using a particular lens, as in ethnography.

In this class, we will read different kinds of human subjects research and, in the process, practice several important skills. One is to analyze and interpret these texts rhetorically. For example, we'll ask questions like: what is the main claim of a given ethnography? What evidence does the researcher use to support this claim? How does a researcher move from the particular observation to the general postulation about a culture, and is the move valid? We will read studies conducted in vastly different environments (from Somoa in the early 1900s, to classrooms in different settings, to "virtual" environments), as well as studies that focus on different topics and behaviors. As we analyze the moves others make, we'll start practicing our own moves as we prepare to write-up our own interpretations.

Another important skill we’ll explore: what makes for good academic writing? This class has a substantial writing component, so you will write both formal and informal papers. You will produce three different kinds of formal papers: First, rhetorical analysis and close-reading of ethnography, next, a proposal for your own human subjects research project (either case study or oral history), and finally, a brief write-up of a pilot run (two interviews, or one interview and one set of observational "field-notes") for your proposed research project. Your final project in this class will enable you to do original human subjects research in a domain you identify. You'll be asked to show us excerpts from the data you collect and present some tentative ideas and findings. Before you start your research, you'll also learn about the ethics of human subject research and why institutional review boards (IRBs) exist.

So, we start with the theoretical and conceptual by looking at and analyzing example studies. We end with the practical and ethical, as you each embark on your own endeavor to "learn from the living."

For more information about this class, click on the following links.

Class Policies
Assignment schedule
Unit 1 Description: Ethnographic arguments
Unit 2 Description: Case study and oral history
Unit 3 Description: Individual projects