the desire to be dissolved

When I started this exploration of beencountry.com, I was also binging so many different ‘genres’ of music that I figured that part of what I was investing in was the perpetual desire to “classify” every little thing that we encounter on a daily basis. Reading? Well, is it for leisure or am I doing this activity for research? At what point do these actions, gestures, experiences, sensations, and so on get classified as labor? And as someone who has been invested in the realm of pop culture for the last twenty years, and now *seriously* use part of these events and phenomenon as a framework for thinking through some of my academic-skewed pursuits, I am always a bit unsure as to where reading as an action can fall within that spectrum of pleasure for its owns sake to utilitarian function that gives me an object to frame “research.”

It even makes me ask myself: where do I get to make the judgment call for how these processes fall under the umbrella of ‘research’? If I have a hard time to really come up with a good explanation of research — does reading celebrity gossip and trawling through reviews qualify as research? What kind of research am I thinking about using this information for… is it just to share with my sister, who is my closest, familial tethering to understanding Gen Z? Am I trying to relay some of these conversational attitudes from everyday experiences into my teaching practice without being that “I’m totally hip!” instructor that earns awkward laughs or blank stares when I talk about these moments?¹

As a side bar, I teach introductory writing classes; my qualification to be a valuable candidate for this position can be debated, but I would put forth the argument that I do a pretty adequate job of convincing students that writing isn’t totally bad. Yes, I totally love teaching and the best part of the opportunity to be a facilitator in the classroom, despite the growing doom-and-gloom of the ‘rot’ which seems to be setting in within the arts & humanities sphere, is that there is always at least one student who walks away that year with a kind of confidence that I am no longer “needed” for them to be a successful writer. But the really nice aspect of my teaching discipline is that I work in a very interdisciplinary program that asks us to really think about building and developing writing skills that are applicable, convenient, and beneficial outside of writing the five-paragraph essay; an essay structure that is scripted that makes students feel trapped to certain tropes of writing in a format that a) uses three paragraphs that structures a hierarchy of examples to support their main argument and b) saving “the best for last” reason to create an “aha!” moment before a conclusion.

I have been very grateful that, at the end of each cycle of students per quarter, I have students who feel a wave of relief when I tell them to kill their relationship with the five-paragraph essay structure.

“You mean I can only have two sub-arguments to support my main conclusion?” Yup.

“… What do I do with the other paragraph then? I still have words left in my word count?” Well, you can do lots of things with that! One, do you need to fulfill the word count requirement? Is your argument complete and well developed enough? You’re done. Two, if you think one of those other ideas could use more explanation and analysis work… why not use another paragraph to explore and explain its importance further? It’s never a bad thing to just dig into a detail or small moment that you think needs more of what you find to be interesting or compelling!

When I teach research, the first thing I tell students is find something that you enjoy doing. As a grad student, research communicates something differently than the research my undergraduate students do; many are engineering students across a wide range of specializations, some are business economics majors, others are in mathematics, applied mathematics, computer science, psychology, studio art, biology, literature, and so on.

Side note: I get a roster with student information before the start of every quarter, so I prepare each quarter to cater the kind of information and material that will be applicable for what it is they’re doing. So, if I have predominantly STEM students in a research-focused course, I always emphasize showing databases with conferences, proceedings, journal publications, lab studies, etc. so they can familiarize themselves with the kind of writing that happens within their field. No, this doesn’t mean I deprioritize my arts & humanities, and social sciences kids! I always maintain that each of my students is my priority and I am there to guide and teach them the basic tools and resources that are at their disposal. If I have only one literature student, I still make half of my lecture and class activities around introducing them to separate databases geared towards those disciplines, as well as the benefits of examining primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.

Research for me is by scrolling through the largest university press publications for books that others in my possession have cited/referenced; I also compare response(s) from casual perspectives — like that of a music critic or journalist — and see if there are scholar/academic texts that engage with those same problems. Example: I recently started reading Tiya Miles’ Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era because I’ve been thinking about the relationships and connections we have with “places and spaces.” But it also came out of recent critiques lobbed at Blake Lively & co. and other couples who opt to hold marriage celebrations in plantations that held and used enslaved people². It also makes me think of Kite’s publication ““What’s on the earth is in the stars, and what’s in the stars is on the earth”” where she discusses the idea of paranormal mythology as an extension of the American imperial project to use ghosts and hauntings to build a spectacle of a future for the continuation of a settler future and its logics. So, when I research, I tend to read lots of sources at the same time; but I also take notes in a Moleskine, write down questions that these things are poking out of me, think through some of the concepts and problems that they’re trying to address. I’ve built my own language of research and its process through planning, reading, critically questioning, and using stream of conscious writing to find where my “argument” might lie.

The biggest component for how I teach is to be mindful of how I frame “research” itself for my students, because ultimately that can make success in writing much more available to them. But first thing: I don’t tell them my own research process or defining it. I want them to figure it out on their own and see how different it can be from someone else’s.

Getting back to “research.” I always use this opportunity for students to have small, in-class discussion first before I throw things their way. When you teach first-year students, many of whom selected a class or section based on other more significant things in their schedule, they are too scared to call out or raise their hand. Totally normal. So, I use this time to let them talk and get to know one another, but also really thing about what research is — and how to approach that process.

Some of the questions that I ask them to write down, take notes on, or elaborate in a discussion with one another are:

• What even is research? How do you define it?
• How do you start “doing research?” What are your own steps? Where does your process differ or align with someone else’s? Why do you think there are similarities or differences?
• What are other assignments you’ve done that you felt you conducted/did research?
• What, if any, difference is there between research within coursework and outside of the classroom? Is there a difference in how you investigate topics that are particularly interesting to you vs. “forced” assignments?
• What do you think is the easiest part of research? What is the most difficult part of research?

You will probably get a lot of the same answers and that’s okay! I always ask students to share a few responses to these questions because I am always invested in hearing about it — it helps me understand how they prioritize certain information, how they map ideas or themes, what kind of connections they’re making, and potential grievances they might have with doing this kind of thing in a setting and environment that they are obligated to be a part of (these classes are mandatory, so making them less boring is always key for me). When I listen to these answers, I like them to know that I understand their thinking and analysis process; students want to be heard, but I also start picking up on patterns in these meetings and discussions to take into account when I start reading and looking over their writing and their assignments.

If someone imagines research as being very objective, a step-by-step manual, with a difficulty of absorbing additional material outside of a pre-determined selection of texts, their revision process requires me to ask more questions of them. Sometimes the easiest questions that I provide in feedback sessions and meetings is “Why do you think so?” or “Why do you believe in that?” If I have a student who can get lost in the process and whose writing can be overly burdened with long-winded sentences or they want to do so many things at once, I have to set boundaries on what they can prioritize in their writing; will all of this information be useful for a reader, or can we get rid of some of the introductory context material to set up more detailed analyses/critiques of these ideas? It’s never fun to tighten the reigns when students are starting to feel like they’ve hit their stride when it comes to exploring the possibilities of research. So, I always remind students that “freedom” in the classroom is pretty ambiguous. If they want to write an examination of Little Red Riding Hood as a feminist manifesto, I’m all for it! I just want them to demonstrate why they are interpreting the material as such and explore the material and supplementary sources that is entirely centered around what they think and not other authors’ perspectives on it.

When I provide a foundation of research in the different courses I’ve taught (and I’ve taught BIPOC-dominant speculative & dystopian fiction to American 90s culture to disability rhetoric to narratives of Earth and space to climate-focused narratives and themes), it’s always the same. Research is a way to source and “validate” answers for a research question. If my students are ask, “What’s the purpose of this class?” It’s a research question. And my response would be: it fulfills a requirement established by the university, determined by the criteria of their respective program; it is meant to address learning objectives, while providing them with specific writing skills within that class; and the material is all built to address concepts that have been scaffolded to help them achieve different writing skills and processes to “write.”

So, when teaching research:

1. Prioritize students asking what they think “research is.”
2. Find some component, feature, idea, concept, etc. that they will enjoy.
3. Following #2, not everything within the boundaries of the class will be awesome or interesting; but they should pursue an idea or concept that they want to engage with. I tell students it’s also very okay to write about something that they dislike or found problematic. Critiques, when well done and engaging, can offer a nuanced perspective that opens up a new line of thinking or understanding of something.
4. Offer guidance on what your research process is like. You don’t have to get super in-depth about what your discipline or specialization is, but they should be able to see that “process in action.” I always offer brief writing samples of things I’ve worked on — I’ll show them a map of how I’ve developed conference papers, notes, questions I’ve thought about.
5. Following #5, I’m wary about showing previous student examples because I think sometimes students will see a piece of writing and go, “If X student got an A on this assignment, I just have to copy its formula, and I’ll get my own A.” So if students want an example, I tell them I’ll go over their process with them in one-on-one meetings or consultations so we can use their own process and sample.
6. Start forming a research question. Research becomes infinitely easier when students are able to use an open-ended question to address, respond to, criticize, examine and/or explore!

Mind you, a lot of what I do here is centered around more flexibility in the final assignment. But I think in order for students to engage with a writing assignment/essay in good faith, they should understand the barebones of what they’re doing. And it’s helpful for them to have a good starting place on really asking what it means to do/commit to research.

Next time, I’ll address my approaches to familiarizing students with their own research question. But, as always, I have found that having a conversation with students about the relationship they have with these kind of activities makes it easier for me to ‘teach’ them how to practice research and those adjacent skills. It doesn’t mean that every group of students I have are receptive to this information session or class discussion; some meetings are infinitely harder than others — and I have done this over Zoom, no less! But I have found that one of the most interesting parts of teaching is the necessity of adaptability for these moments.

Fortunately for me, I always get to go home to a barking-fest overload with four amazing fur babies… so even when I have those off days, I get to go home to a rowdy crew and celebrity gossip. The last important thing about teaching research: have a space that is free of that relationship with work. While celebrity gossip can inform some of my own actions and writing, I always keep my Moleskine out of reach of my iPad when I’m trying to catch up on the latest celebrity and pop culture news.

It’s not that I won’t eventually steal away to go write a mental note of something that was said or that makes me raise my eyebrow… but that, sometimes, I just want to read something without needing to rationalize or theorize it. I’ll totally process it later.

X., D

Notes

1. I had my own “How do you do fellow kids?” moment last fall quarter when teaching students about the parallels and evolution of slang from the 90s vs. now. I vividly remember trying to make the argument for specific phrases like: today’s “it’s the _____ for me” vs. the 90’s “wicked cool”; “spill the tea” vs. “I’ve got the 411”; and “OK Boomer” vs. “talk to the hand.” My 15-year-old brother, 17-year-old sister, and 18-year-old sister-in-law all came to a mutual decision that “Not a vibe” and “It’s giving depression” were the equivalent to our buzzkill of saying something, then immediately going “… Not!”. But I remember trying to explain to my students how language is a product of its culture, society, and ‘time’ and apparently it was giving embarrassing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ↩︎
2. I know there are some earnest apologies out there re: these choices, but I don’t really want to grapple with the insensitivity that follows out of logics to hold events and gatherings in spaces that have different meanings and a history for others. I have… thoughts, but I don’t think I need to explicate the legacy of enslavement and how it still is a recent, residual, and everyday reality that affects Black people and others through its formation. ↩︎