January 13, 2025: Spring Semester Previews: Graduate Research Methods

[AnotherSpring semester is upon us, and with it my annual Spring semester previews. Thistime I’ll focus on one skill I’m excited to be teaching as part of each ofthese courses. Please share what you’ve got going on this semester and year aswell!]

I writeand think a lot about dualities, and more exactly about analyzing them ratherthan seeking to reduce them as is our natural human tendency. But I’ll admitthat there’s a particularly complicated one that I struggle with maintaining inmy own work: the duality of nuance and clarity, of trying to approach oursubjects as the multilayered things they are, while at the same time trying tostay what we have to say about them clearly and compellingly. I think finding away to do both of those at once is at the heart of what I do—as a thinker, as awriter, as a teacher, as a public citizen—and so I’m very excited to make itthe heart of my Graduate Research Methods syllabus as well. For example, we’llstart by reading both TheTurn of the Screw and the manifold contexts and lenses that inform howwe read it—and our goal will be to keep a sense of just how nuanced this textis, while still figuring out how to express our own takes on it with clarity. I’mexcited to work with our phenomenal grad students to practice those vitalskills!

Nextpreview post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What’son your radar?