scholarly journals Towards innovative teaching pedagogies in gender research: A review of a gender research methods class

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-250
Author(s):  
Oludayo Olorunfemi
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Feminist Epistemology ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Innovative Teaching ◽  
Gender Research ◽  
Black Feminist Epistemology ◽  
Women And Gender Studies

This commentary examines the teaching of research methods in Women and Gender Studies in the Gender Studies Unit of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. It interrogates how the course has increased the awareness of students in the methods of conducting research and how the research they conduct has implications on marginalized populations. The course also highlights the need for a growing body of knowledge that engages the experience of black women in Africa and the African diaspora. The course draws the attention of students to the agency of women through the reading and teaching of various research methods in Gender Studies. An ethnographic approach is adopted using participant  observation in the course covering a period of one semester. Also, a critical perspective is applied in discussing the particular epistemological  standpoint deployed by the course instructor. In other words, the black feminist epistemology serves as an important strategy for increasing global-minded consciousness of how a course in gender research methods engages the agency of black women using Hip Hop pedagogy. Keywords: Gender Research Methods, Black Feminist Epistemology, Global-Minded, Black Consciousness, African Feminism.

“Written, published, … cross-indexed, and footnoted”: Producing Black Female Ph.D.s and Black Women's and Gender Studies Scholarship in Political Science

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (04) ◽  
pp. 819-829 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
Black Female ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
And Gender

In an essay entitled “Variations on Negations and the Heresy of Black Feminist Creativity,” Black feminist Michele Wallace explores the difficulties of producing and presenting a “black female cultural perspective, which for the most part is not allowed to become written in a society in which writing is the primary currency of knowledge” (Wallace 1990, 54). Although she anticipates that some might find a defense of Black female cultural and political criticism “elitist,” she nevertheless remains, “convinced that the major battle for the ‘other’ of the ‘other’ [i.e., Black women] will be to achieve a voice, or voices, thus inevitably transforming the basic relations of dominant discourse. Only with these voices—written, published, televised, taped, filmed, staged, cross-indexed, and footnoted—will [Black women] approach control over [their] own lives” (66).

Introduction to Ethnography

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Kwame Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Research Tradition ◽  
Primary Qualities ◽  
Bronislaw Malinowski ◽  
Bronisław Malinowski ◽  
Oriented Research

This introductory chapter introduces ethnography as a distinct research and writing tradition. The author begins by historically contextualizing ethnography’s professionalization within the fields of anthropology and sociology. While highlighting the formidable influences of, for example, Bronislaw Malinowski and the Chicago school, the author complicates existing understandings by bringing significant, but less-recognized, influences and contributions to light. The chapter next outlines three principal research methods that most ethnographers utilize—namely, participant-observation, fieldnote writing, and ethnographic interviewing. The discussion then shifts from method to methodology to explain the primary qualities that separate ethnography from other forms of participant-observation-oriented research. This includes introducing a research disposition called ethnographic comportment, which serves as a standard for gauging ethnography throughout the remainder of the book. The author presents ethnographic comportment as reflecting both ethnographers’ awarenesses of and their accountabilities to the research tradition in which they participate.

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