notes

nice set of interviews with scientists (including social scientists) on converging technologies http://www.wilsoncenter.org/convergence

calls for participation/papers/proposals

histories and foci of/in STS environmental politics

@http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html @http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review Barbara Kamler and Pat Thomson, "Doctoral writing: Pedagogies for work with literatures" @http://www.deakin.edu.au/current-students/assets/resources/study-support/study-skills/research/kamler.pdf

http://socialtheoryapplied.com/what-is-social-theory/

Kim Fortun, x2199, fortuk@rpi.edu Office hours: Tuesday, 1-2 and by appt, Sage 5114
 * __ EXPERIMENTS IN METHODS __** Spring 2013, Friday, 10-1, Sage 5711

This course immerses you in and encourages experimentation with qualitative research design, and is organized to help you develop a research proposal. The primary goal is to help you think deeply about your research goals, and about different ways that you can design a qualitative study. If you haven’t yet decided on a dissertation topic, you will need to select a trial topic that you will develop throughout the semester, and turn into a trial research proposal. Your will produce extensive research memos every week. These memos will help you articulate a focus and methodology for your research, and to contextualize it within both scholarly literatures, and within a particular historical period and political economy. Weekly memos will also draw out the expertise and motivation that you can bring to the research at this point, and will help you recognize other types of expertise that you will need to develop as your research progresses.

Your grade for the course will be based on the following percentages: Weekly memos 30% Research proposal 30% Project Poster 10% Proposal oral presentation 10% Research journal 10% Participation (including peer reviews) 10%

Reading, memo templates and your own portfolio will be at http://figuringoutmethods.wikispaces.com/

The memos that you produce each week will be due in your wiki portfolio by Thursday 9am prior to a Friday class. This will allow me and the students assigned to be your peer reviewers to read and evaluate your memos before the class in which they will be discussed. Please respect this schedule to enable the feedback process – knowing that that your role as a reviewer of other people’s work is important. In addition to helping the person whom you are reviewing, it will also hone your own analytic and research design skills.