What makes research compelling?

[InscrutableHair]

Hi everyone,

Since we're all budding researchers, I'm interested to hear what you think makes a particular piece of research interesting. Who is currently doing research you think is fascinating, and what about it is so compelling?

[Melvillage_Idiot]

I get the most into any subject that I can tie into a social context. I've done a lot of research on regional literature -- both by writers from the region, and by outsiders looking in -- and for me, having that backbone of "real" people to connect literature to is great. It bothers me, as an Americanist, that almost every "Great American Novel" ignores or dismisses whole swathes of the country, so getting past that to find what folks elsewhere thought is always fun.

My theory background is real flimsy, so I sometimes feel at a loss when I'm reading something super theoretical or abstract (Anybody reading this post, if you wanna PM me some good reads to buff up my theory capabilities before I go off to the next level, I'm totally game!). I actually found myself ruling out potential PhD programs if too many faculty/grad student interests on their website used the word "intersectionality." It gives me some serious imposter syndrome sometimes, and it sometimes scares me that I'll get to my first PhD class and completely fall apart because I can't recite the right passage of Saussure. I mean, apparently my writing sample demonstrated enough of a strong theoretical framework to get me into my two top picks, but I'll be damned if I can tell you what that theoretical framework actually was =P

[jvvne]

I'm most interested in research that fills in some gaps in what has already been done. We already, simply as a product of our time(s), have so much information available all the time about almost anything/everything. I am therefore more interested in research that aims at highlighting a nearly-forgotten individual (typically women/non CIS folks or POC), school of thought, historical event, etc., or re-inserting an important but under-taught area into the pedagogical canon--than rehashing/attempting a "new" angle at an area that has already been studied at great length. 

This might be the rebellious millennial in me (loL), but i am also super super resistant to stereotypical academic jargon, and totally agree with @Melvillage_Idiot's resistance to words like "intersectionality"--I find that this language doesn't usually mean anything deeper than the plain-speak version, and is often just used to keep certain types of people out of the classroom/keep people from feeling comfortable or confident in the academic spaces. 

Edited February 21, 2018 by jvvne

[nichts]

59 minutes ago, Melvillage_Idiot said:

I actually found myself ruling out potential PhD programs if too many faculty/grad student interests on their website used the word "intersectionality."

41 minutes ago, jvvne said:

I find that this language doesn't usually mean anything deeper than the plain-speak version

Yes. When someone uses jargon like "intersectionality," "unpack," etc. I wonder whether they're insecure. And if you can't explain your interests in layman's terms or with examples your average Joe would understand, it's gonna be tough teaching a classroom of undergrads.

[M(allthevowels)H]

2 hours ago, Melvillage_Idiot said:

My theory background is real flimsy, so I sometimes feel at a loss when I'm reading something super theoretical or abstract (Anybody reading this post, if you wanna PM me some good reads to buff up my theory capabilities before I go off to the next level, I'm totally game!)...

...It gives me some serious imposter syndrome sometimes, and it sometimes scares me that I'll get to my first PhD class and completely fall apart because I can't recite the right passage of Saussure. I mean, apparently my writing sample demonstrated enough of a strong theoretical framework to get me into my two top picks, but I'll be damned if I can tell you what that theoretical framework actually was =P

Are you...me? Are we...the same? This is exactly my experience/fear. When I was interloping in English classes during my MFA I could speak about the works we were studying in nonspecific terms, but then someone would say, "Oh yeah, like [insert name]'s theory of [word]" and I would nod and say "yeah, totally" and then google the reference as soon as I got home. If anyone sent you books/youtube videos to buff up theory pass them along. (Also, you name-dropping Saussure to make your point about imposter syndrome gave me imposter syndrome.)

[Yanaka]

Intersectionality is easy—it’s essentialism that bugs me more  

[clinamen]

3 hours ago, jvvne said:

words like "intersectionality"--I find that this language doesn't usually mean anything deeper than the plain-speak version, and is often just used to keep certain types of people out of the classroom/keep people from feeling comfortable or confident in the academic spaces. 

I just want to jump in here to advocate for the importance of words like "intersectionality," especially in the case of "intersectionality." In fact, without intersectionality, concepts like feminism are not inclusive and actually isolate women of color, the LGBTQ+ community, etc. By making the move from just plain "feminism" to "intersectional feminism," these "certain types of people" are actually included in the conversation and welcomed into academic space rather than kept out. So, in some cases, what some might consider jargon is absolutely important and shouldn't be shrugged off as meaningless. 

[Pezpoet]

15 minutes ago, clinamen said:

I just want to jump in here to advocate for the importance of words like "intersectionality," especially in the case of "intersectionality." In fact, without intersectionality, concepts like feminism are not inclusive and actually isolate women of color, the LGBTQ+ community, etc. By making the move from just plain "feminism" to "intersectional feminism," these "certain types of people" are actually included in the conversation and welcomed into academic space rather than kept out. So, in some cases, what some might consider jargon is absolutely important and shouldn't be shrugged off as meaningless. 

this.

Edited February 21, 2018 by Pezpoet

[Hermenewtics]

I don't want to speak for the posters above me, but I would assume their concerns have more to do with the sort of jargon one encounters in a case like the Sokal hoax as opposed to phrases like "intersectionality" and "transnational literatures."

[Melvillage_Idiot]

17 minutes ago, clinamen said:

I just want to jump in here to advocate for the importance of words like "intersectionality," especially in the case of "intersectionality." In fact, without intersectionality, concepts like feminism are not inclusive and actually isolate women of color, the LGBTQ+ community, etc. By making the move from just plain "feminism" to "intersectional feminism," these "certain types of people" are actually included in the conversation and welcomed into academic space rather than kept out. So, in some cases, what some might consider jargon is absolutely important and shouldn't be shrugged off as meaningless. 

 

4 minutes ago, Hermenewtics said:

I don't want to speak for the posters above me, but I would assume their concerns have more to do with the sort of jargon one encounters in a case like the Sokal hoax as opposed to phrases like "intersectionality" and "transnational literatures."

Responding to both: I am absolutely in favor of genuine intersectionality in the social contexts mentioned here.

I admit, I had to look up what the Sokal hoax is, but that's exactly what I'm referring to. I noticed that a lot of faculty and especially a lot of current grad student pages at programs will have sentences like this: "So-and-so's research examines intersectionality between the time, place, and media of early Victorian poetry" -- a jargon-y term followed by a list of vague qualifiers, with no sense given of what the research is really getting at or how those different items connect. "Intersectionality" is not the only example, but it is the one that I saw the most and really stuck with me, thus my usage here.

 

 

[rising_star]

16 minutes ago, Melvillage_Idiot said:

I noticed that a lot of faculty and especially a lot of current grad student pages at programs will have sentences like this: "So-and-so's research examines intersectionality between the time, place, and media of early Victorian poetry" -- a jargon-y term followed by a list of vague qualifiers, with no sense given of what the research is really getting at or how those different items connect.

This shouldn't surprise you or anyone else. No one is going to be talking about their research in anything other than vague terms on their departmental website. The specifics come in conference papers and publications. If you just post them anywhere on the web, you're at risk of being scooped and/or seeing your ideas in print with someone else's name as the author(s). This is even more of an issue for grad students because they often have little recourse if this happens other than restarting their dissertation. You don't have to like it but it's the way things work.

[nichts]

The problem I see is not the concept of intersectionality but usage of the term.

[Yanaka]

42 minutes ago, clinamen said:

I just want to jump in here to advocate for the importance of words like "intersectionality," especially in the case of "intersectionality." In fact, without intersectionality, concepts like feminism are not inclusive and actually isolate women of color, the LGBTQ+ community, etc. By making the move from just plain "feminism" to "intersectional feminism," these "certain types of people" are actually included in the conversation and welcomed into academic space rather than kept out. So, in some cases, what some might consider jargon is absolutely important and shouldn't be shrugged off as meaningless. 

Thank you for saying this! 

[Melvillage_Idiot]

1 hour ago, rising_star said:

This shouldn't surprise you or anyone else. No one is going to be talking about their research in anything other than vague terms on their departmental website. The specifics come in conference papers and publications. If you just post them anywhere on the web, you're at risk of being scooped and/or seeing your ideas in print with someone else's name as the author(s). This is even more of an issue for grad students because they often have little recourse if this happens other than restarting their dissertation. You don't have to like it but it's the way things work.

I hadn't thought about the possibility of academic theft; that's a sad scenario that I'd (perhaps naively?) not thought was something you'd have to prepare for.

Bringing it back to my original comment (and I probably should have connected back to it more clearly in the last post), the concerns I have with jargon come back to my weak theory background -- the fear that a long list of technical-yet-very-vague research projects indicates either (1) the program would be a very poor fit for me because I don't understand the jargon, or (2) that I'm not cut out for scholarship, and a good candidate wouldn't find the descriptions vague at all. To someone like me, I think a simple statement of works/periods/authors the author works with is less daunting and more inviting than an abstract description of theoretical interests. It's not that jargon doesn't have a good use in the right context; it's not that I think the use of jargon automatically indicates an inability to explain research clearly; it's simply that I don't have the know-how to parse it all, and that's been rather worrisome as I've been working towards a level of education where I absolutely will need to be able to parse it all.

[Hermenewtics]

53 minutes ago, Melvillage_Idiot said:

I hadn't thought about the possibility of academic theft; that's a sad scenario that I'd (perhaps naively?) not thought was something you'd have to prepare for.

Bringing it back to my original comment (and I probably should have connected back to it more clearly in the last post), the concerns I have with jargon come back to my weak theory background -- the fear that a long list of technical-yet-very-vague research projects indicates either (1) the program would be a very poor fit for me because I don't understand the jargon, or (2) that I'm not cut out for scholarship, and a good candidate wouldn't find the descriptions vague at all. To someone like me, I think a simple statement of works/periods/authors the author works with is less daunting and more inviting than an abstract description of theoretical interests. It's not that jargon doesn't have a good use in the right context; it's not that I think the use of jargon automatically indicates an inability to explain research clearly; it's simply that I don't have the know-how to parse it all, and that's been rather worrisome as I've been working towards a level of education where I absolutely will need to be able to parse it all.

I haven't heard of much in the way of rising_star's concerns, but I may be able to offer some insight into your concerns: think about jargon as a sort of barrier-to-entry for English scholars. If you can speak fluent jargon it usually means you care enough to have immersed yourself in the (often questionable) discourse/theory of your field and thus you're a respectable scholar. In the same way that clubs and fraternities have their otherwise meaningless rites of initiation, so many disciplines (education is the chief offender, in my mind)develop a needlessly complex series of increasingly abstruse terms and phrases which they use to isolate themselves, but also as a way to identify similarly indoctrinated individuals.

example: 

Noam Chomsky and Martha Nussbaum have both written at great lengths about this particular feature of Poststructuralist thought, so you might track down some of their thoughts on the subject if that's of any interest to you

However, the necessary caveat is that in terms of simple classification, it's important not to confuse jargon with specialized or technical language. A narratology scholar will necessarily have a different vocabulary and likely use that vocabulary quite a bit, in the same way that a poetry scholary will constantly annoy you by asking you about scansion and catalectic trochaic tetrameter.   

[nichts]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's important to meet your audience where they are, and academics sometimes choose their own self-importance over communicating or relating to another person. This of course varies by situation. That said, thanks to @Melvillage_Idiot, @clinamen, @rising_star, and @Hermenewtics, who raise some interesting points.

[rising_star]

1 hour ago, Melvillage_Idiot said:

To someone like me, I think a simple statement of works/periods/authors the author works with is less daunting and more inviting than an abstract description of theoretical interests.

I guess the question you should be asking yourself is whether someone like you (applying to English PhD programs) is the intended audience. My guess is that the intended audience of one's interests on a departmental website are those currently pursuing or holding a PhD in English or a closely related field. 

@Jožin z bažin, the question of audience is key here. If you're commuting with experts in your field, then they won't necessarily think of these things as jargon. Rather, they become a sort of lingua franca such that one term can be used to avoid a lengthy explanation.

3 hours ago, Melvillage_Idiot said:

I noticed that a lot of faculty and especially a lot of current grad student pages at programs will have sentences like this: "So-and-so's research examines intersectionality between the time, place, and media of early Victorian poetry" -- a jargon-y term followed by a list of vague qualifiers, with no sense given of what the research is really getting at or how those different items connect.

FWIW, this example actually says a lot to me now due to my graduate training (not in English/literature, btw) than it would've when I started my master's or even my PhD. The idea that someone will look at issues/questions around race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. and early Victorian poetry tells me that this person is bringing concepts from geography and cultural studies to bear on Victorian literature. But again, that's come from years of study. Don't let it intimidate you at this stage because, as I said above, you aren't really the target audience for these websites anyway.

[Crow T. Robot]

@Melvillage_Idiot I'll suggest another explanation for the research projects you're finding dissatisfyingly jargony: people just thematize their research in different ways. I think of literary studies work as going in one of two directions:

1. You examine a specific archive (e.g. early modern poetry), its social and historical contexts, and a cluster of issues that arise in that archive and those contexts. Or,
2. You trace a cluster of ideas across several archives, making connections and noting differences across different contexts.

The second kind of work tends by nature to be more 'theoretical' because the theoretical framework is driving the inquiry, as opposed to the period/archive doing the driving. This kind of work, or at least the work I've read that I'd bucket in this category, tends to need to spend much more time defining key terms, teasing out resonances with existing philosophical conversations (which already have their own key terms proliferating...), and negotiating competing theories--all of which can leave you with a ton of specialized terminology to juggle. (If you can't tell, this is the kind of work I want to do; theory is totally my favorite thing about literary studies...)

If I'm reading your posts right, it sounds like the first kind of work resonates much more with you than the second kind. That's rad; I'd just wonder if scholars who are being 'jargony' may be trying for a different way of thematizing their research than what you/others may want to do, as opposed to just doing a failed/obscurantist version of the same kind of research you have in mind, if that makes sense.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Crow T. Robot

[Crow T. Robot]

2 hours ago, Hermenewtics said:

I haven't heard of much in the way of rising_star's concerns, but I may be able to offer some insight into your concerns: think about jargon as a sort of barrier-to-entry for English scholars. If you can speak fluent jargon it usually means you care enough to have immersed yourself in the (often questionable) discourse/theory of your field and thus you're a respectable scholar. In the same way that clubs and fraternities have their otherwise meaningless rites of initiation, so many disciplines (education is the chief offender, in my mind)develop a needlessly complex series of increasingly abstruse terms and phrases which they use to isolate themselves, but also as a way to identify similarly indoctrinated individuals.

example: 

Noam Chomsky and Martha Nussbaum have both written at great lengths about this particular feature of Poststructuralist thought, so you might track down some of their thoughts on the subject if that's of any interest to you

However, the necessary caveat is that in terms of simple classification, it's important not to confuse jargon with specialized or technical language. A narratology scholar will necessarily have a different vocabulary and likely use that vocabulary quite a bit, in the same way that a poetry scholary will constantly annoy you by asking you about scansion and catalectic trochaic tetrameter.   

Just out of curiosity, what makes 'poststructuralism' circle jerk-y and narratology and poetics technical for you? I think we can all agree that there's some 'poststructuralist' criticism that's just epically solipsistic and bad, but I think at their best, schools of thought influenced by Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze, etc., come up with concepts and associated terms that do real critical and analytical work, just as the terms from the fields you flag as "technical" do.

[Hermenewtics]

2 hours ago, Crow T. Robot said:

Just out of curiosity, what makes 'poststructuralism' circle jerk-y and narratology and poetics technical for you? I think we can all agree that there's some 'poststructuralist' criticism that's just epically solipsistic and bad, but I think at their best, schools of thought influenced by Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze, etc., come up with concepts and associated terms that do real critical and analytical work, just as the terms from the fields you flag as "technical" do.

Hm, well, not to dodge your question, but my main point was to offer a bit of support to the premise that literary jargon can be problematic/obfuscatory, and I tried to do that by glossing a few more recent responses to a frequently criticized segment of it (poststructuralism) from a few interesting names.

To respond more directly, I won't disagree with what I think you're getting at, but I will say that there's a marked difference between traditional poetics and, say, what de Man is up to in a Allegories of Reading. We can agree that one is certainly more grounded and less abstract than the other, no? This difference can lead to massive gulfs in interpretation and criticism: for example, there are some critics who have accused Lacan of being a fraud and Foucault himself famously described Derrida as an "intellectual terrorist." My point simply being that more abstracted and necessarily "difficult" approaches have the potential to fluctuate wildly in their "epically bad"-ness (or good-ness), while more "grounded" approaches tends to yield more consistently readable criticism. 

More importantly, "circle-jerk-y" is a perfect term and I think we all ought to use it in every theoretical discussion regardless of context. 

[Yanaka]

Well I want to draw your attention to how all these names are from the good ole canon. If we talk about race and feminism it's usually less circle jerk-y and more in business  

[Crow T. Robot]

50 minutes ago, Hermenewtics said:

Hm, well, not to dodge your question, but my main point was to offer a bit of support to the premise that literary jargon can be problematic/obfuscatory, and I tried to do that by glossing a few more recent responses to a frequently criticized segment of it (poststructuralism) from a few interesting names.

To respond more directly, I won't disagree with what I think you're getting at, but I will say that there's a marked difference between traditional poetics and, say, what de Man is up to in a Allegories of Reading. We can agree that one is certainly more grounded and less abstract than the other, no? This difference can lead to massive gulfs in interpretation and criticism: for example, there are some critics who have accused Lacan of being a fraud and Foucault himself famously described Derrida as an "intellectual terrorist." My point simply being that more abstracted and necessarily "difficult" approaches have the potential to fluctuate wildly in their "epically bad"-ness (or good-ness), while more "grounded" approaches tends to yield more consistently readable criticism. 

More importantly, "circle-jerk-y" is a perfect term and I think we all ought to use it in every theoretical discussion regardless of context. 

Yup, I gotcha, I was just poking at the distinction (theory/jargony vs. textualist/technical) you draw in support of that main point, especially because to me, the fact that this distinction doesn't quite work has interesting implications for your main point. If you grant that there is not necessarily so substantive of a difference between the jargony and the technical (as in, if you grant that we could approach 'theory' and all its jargony terms as a technical toolkit that helps us read texts), the main problem becomes less around getting institutions to stop using jargon as a gatekeeping measure and more around empowering emerging scholars with the tools they might want or need to do good work.

I'm not sure, though, about the "grounded"/"abstract" distinction. For my money, each example you give draws on and is part of a different discursive formation; none is inherently more "grounded" in a given text than the other. I'm also not convinced that acrimonious debate/diverging interpretations around a body of a work should cause us to regard that body of work with suspicion or, implicitly, accuse its writers of obscurantism. The kind of contention you put your finger on is certainly not unique to the universe of Big French Theory or other fields people may find jargon-heavy.

In terms of readability, oh yeah, I hear you. Lacan is my ride or die, but reading him is a massive headache. Totally different experience from reading Brooks or hooks or even Foucault or a whole host of other important thinkers who just come right out and say what they mean. What I'd say is that I think it's valuable for literature students to have different kinds of reading experiences--to read writers who situate you in different relations to the text. For Lacan, a lot of his texts (mostly originally delivered orally) seem at times like the speech of an analysand, a patient whose couch-babble you must decipher, and within which you have to determine the unspoken stuff that everything else circulates around. Being put in that position stimulates a different kind of thinking from the thinking you find yourself doing while reading Brown, Ngai, Morton, etc. (idk, just freestyling contemporary lit critics here). I guess that's my ultimate point.

[Hermenewtics]

14 minutes ago, Crow T. Robot said:

Yup, I gotcha, I was just poking at the distinction (theory/jargony vs. textualist/technical) you draw in support of that main point, especially because to me, the fact that this distinction doesn't quite work has interesting implications for your main point. If you grant that there is not necessarily so substantive of a difference between the jargony and the technical (as in, if you grant that we could approach 'theory' and all its jargony terms as a technical toolkit that helps us read texts), the main problem becomes less around getting institutions to stop using jargon as a gatekeeping measure and more around empowering emerging scholars with the tools they might want or need to do good work.

I'm not sure, though, about the "grounded"/"abstract" distinction. For my money, each example you give draws on and is part of a different discursive formation; none is inherently more "grounded" in a given text than the other. I'm also not convinced that acrimonious debate/diverging interpretations around a body of a work should cause us to regard that body of work with suspicion or, implicitly, accuse its writers of obscurantism. The kind of contention you put your finger on is certainly not unique to the universe of Big French Theory or other fields people may find jargon-heavy.

In terms of readability, oh yeah, I hear you. Lacan is my ride or die, but reading him is a massive headache. Totally different experience from reading Brooks or hooks or even Foucault or a whole host of other important thinkers who just come right out and say what they mean. What I'd say is that I think it's valuable for literature students to have different kinds of reading experiences--to read writers who situate you in different relations to the text. For Lacan, a lot of his texts (mostly originally delivered orally) seem at times like the speech of an analysand, a patient whose couch-babble you must decipher, and within which you have to determine the unspoken stuff that everything else circulates around. Being put in that position stimulates a different kind of thinking from the thinking you find yourself doing while reading Brown, Ngai, Morton, etc. (idk, just freestyling contemporary lit critics here). I guess that's my ultimate point.

 

Interesting, I think we have some common ground on the first and third points, but would you mind expanding on the second? If I understand you on the second part, we agree that divergent interpretations do not necessarily indicate the presence of obscurantism; I take it as a corollary, however that the presence of obscurantism can and often does result in divergent interpretations. Specifically in the context of Big French Theory, it is not uncommon for people like Martha Nussbaum and Gary Gutting to accuse various branches of exactly this sin. Now, it's an entirely different matter to agree with them, but my original point was simply to acknowledge their existence. Does that make sense? I suppose I should have been more explicit. 

Haha, a Lacanian? You have my condolences, my friend. I always feel terrible for those poor, unsuspecting students who stumble unawares into a classroom where a lit theory professor is waiting to spring Lacan's lectures on them. Oh, and feel free to PM if you want to chat some more. I feel a bit bad hijacking @InscrutableHair's thread with my blithering. 

[Crow T. Robot]

7 hours ago, Hermenewtics said:

Interesting, I think we have some common ground on the first and third points, but would you mind expanding on the second? If I understand you on the second part, we agree that divergent interpretations do not necessarily indicate the presence of obscurantism; I take it as a corollary, however that the presence of obscurantism can and often does result in divergent interpretations. Specifically in the context of Big French Theory, it is not uncommon for people like Martha Nussbaum and Gary Gutting to accuse various branches of exactly this sin. Now, it's an entirely different matter to agree with them, but my original point was simply to acknowledge their existence. Does that make sense? I suppose I should have been more explicit. 

Hey @Hermenewtics, I'm just going to throw my last thoughts on here because I think this discussion is still pretty germane to the thread. If all you want me to agree to is that 'obscurantism' (and calling whole branches of thought categorically 'obscurantist' is quite a meaty and suspect premise, with or without Nussbaum's support) leads to divergent interpretations, sure, I'm with ya. I just don't know what that does for us. Maybe in the context of, like, analytic philosophy divergent interpretations are problematic and indicative of ineffective work, but I'm really not convinced that producing work that leads to divergent interpretations is a "sin" in and of itself.

7 hours ago, Hermenewtics said:

Haha, a Lacanian? You have my condolences, my friend. I always feel terrible for those poor, unsuspecting students who stumble unawares into a classroom where a lit theory professor is waiting to spring Lacan's lectures on them.

 

[WildeThing]

Jumping on the hate-to-read but love Lacan bandwagon.