Research topic on Ann Coulter and Islamic Women?

[Pink Rose]

It's about Ann Coulter's misconceptions about Islam. I want to convey that Ann Coulter perceives Islam as a threat to civilization in a process known as "Orientalism." My thesis debunks all of Coulter's anti-Islam remarks and suppositions. It's basically a research paper on women in Islam using different dimensions as the body paragraphs: Jihad, Honor Killings, Polygamy, Forced Veiling, etc.

 

But my advisor says that this would sound like a long book. I would love some advice on how I can refine my topic or limit my focus to one specific question? What do you guys think?

[GeoDUDE!]

Puttying aside the first thought, which is who cares about ann coulter, but it sounds like you have the right idea; just stick to one specific question. 

Edited January 27, 2014 by GeoDUDE!

[St Andrews Lynx]

I'd try to focus in on a slightly more general theme, rather than a systematic rebuttal of everything Ann Coulter has said about Islam (for a thesis you want a scholarly argument, not a rant). Something like "The Rhetoric of Orientalism as used by the Far Right" or "Misrepresentations of Islamic Women In American Political Discourse".

 

It will also depend on whether you are writing a Masters or a PhD thesis how broad or narrow your topic is. 

[Geologizer]

Perhaps this is part of the distinction between sciences and humanities, but it sounds like you're putting the cart before the horse, as it were. Admittedly I haven't kept very strong tabs on Anne Coulter's opinions, but it sounds like you're writing this with an objective/vendetta rather than to draw attention to the actual subject you're presumably trying to highlight. With that in mind maybe your adviser forsees falling into some lengthy pitfalls. For example, to do this right I imagine having to justify and relate all of these issues concretely back to Coulter in a way that validates your thesis, but first you must actually properly frame your argument in the context such that you can say she is wrong. The background that you're going to have to set up is going to be a really large undertaking, I would imagine. So, in that sense I agree with St Andrews Lynx's second suggestion of a broader topic. Their first though I think suffers the same pitfall in that when you define a POV that you wish to rebuff explicitly, you're going to have to spend an inordinate amount of time contextualizing rather than arguing.

[bobkindles]

If you had a research project along the lines of "the intersection between classical orientalist discourse and contemporary American representations of Islam and Muslims" then that would be interesting - but yeah, as other people have said, framing your project as a "refutation" of Ann Coulter sounds more like bad liberal journalism than academic research. I'm an international student, and whilst I've heard of Coulter, I can promise you that most people outside of the US do not ascribe that much importance to the specific right-wing commentators who seem to attract so much attention and anger within the United States itself, like Coulter, Pat Robertson, an so on.

 

The specific focus on Coulter aside, it's also worth pointing out that if you want to invoke orientalism/post-colonialism as a theoretical perspective, that is not a straightforward thing to do, and you need to be sensitive to some of the theoretical baggage that comes with Said's critique of orientalism and post-colonial theory more generally - just to pick up on some of your language in your post, you say you would seek to "debunk" Coulter's representations of Islam and Muslims, but one of the theoretical aspects of Said's work that has often been commented on is that, due to the theoretical context and background he is coming from (specifically, the role of Foucault in his work, as distinct from Enlightenment epistemology) he does not really view his work as an attempt to uncover some ultimate "truth" about the orient, beneath the "distorting" influence of orientalism, in fact he is very resistant to the idea that there can be a "truthful" or "objective" representation of the orient, in part because the category "orient" is itself internal to orientalist discourse. The notion of "debunking", on the other hand, does suggest some kind of appeal to an ultimate truth or underlying reality. If you were to position your work as operating within Said's paradigm but then invoke vocabulary like "debunk", that could be seen as very problematic.  

Edited January 27, 2014 by bobkindles

[Pink Rose]

Puttying aside the first thought, which is who cares about ann coulter, but it sounds like you have the right idea; just stick to one specific question. 

 

 

Hi, GeoDUDE!.

Edited January 27, 2014 by rising_star
to remove personally identifying information