Feminist Research Methodologies

Catalog description

This course examines feminist critiques of and approaches to various research methodologies. It will focus on how feminist scholars challenge dominant theories of knowledge and the major qualitative methodologies employed in the social sciences and humanities such as interview, ethnography, participatory research, grounded theory, archival research, and oral history. Students will discuss how research is shaped by the kinds of research questions we ask and the types of materials we use. The course also gives them the opportunity to develop a research proposal, including selecting method(s) of their own interest. The following questions are central to the course: do feminist methods exist? What counts as evidence? How does feminist research approach issues of objectivity and subjectivity? What is the relationship between the researcher and the subject? What key questions guide feminist research and how can we apply those questions to a variety of research topics? Since feminist research methodologies aim to dismantle power structures that perpetuate inequality and oppression, they particularly pay attention to the feminist standpoint theory (centering women’s experiences and knowledge), reflexivity (researcher’s social position), and intersectionality (compounding experiences of discrimination due to overlapping of social identities).