Women and Gender Studies 325

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WMST 101 (002) / Sept 24/09 Susan Paterson
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Class Outline

• Interdisciplinary Research
• Scholarly vs. popular literature
• The difference between primary sources and
  secondary sources
• How to find books and articles at UBC
• How to evaluate your sources

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Interdisciplinary research
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Example of an Interdisciplinary Research Topic -

• How has the current war affected Afghan women?
• What other disciplines could possibly weave into
  this topic?

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• Law
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Anthropology
• Psychology
• History
• Religious Studies

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Popular vs. Scholarly
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Popular

• Periodicals whose goals are to entertain and
  inform.
• Authors are often professional writers rather
  than experts in the subject.
• Content might be fact but also anecdote or
  opinion.
• Articles almost never have bibliographies.
• Require no specialized knowledge or vocabulary to
  be understood.

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Scholarly

• Periodicals whose goal is scholarly
  communication.
• Assumes some scholarly background of the reader.
• Articles often require specialized knowledge and
  vocabulary to be understood.
• Often published by a scholarly association ( i.e.
  University Press).

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Analyzing a Research Topic
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Developing a searchable topic

• What do you know about it? What don't you know?
• What aspects of your topic interest you
  historical, sociological, psychological, etc.?
• What time period do you want to cover?
• On what geographic region do you want to focus?
• What kind of information do you need?
• A brief summary or a lengthy explanation?
• Periodical articles, books, essays, encyclopedia
  articles?
• Statistics?

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Narrow or broaden a search

• Narrow and i.e. woman and Afghanistan and war
  and violence
• Broaden or - i.e. woman and Afghanistan and war
  or violence or abuse
• The asterix Feminis will look for feminists,
  feminist, feminism

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Conceptualize your topic

• Can be done through concept mapping

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Concept mapping on youtube.

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vKhgxuNvbNrA

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Primary Sources Examples

• Once a feminist stories of a generation / by
  Michelene Wandor
• Interviews of women who where involved in the
  Women Liberation Movement at Ruskin College,
  Oxford
• UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
  Discrimination Against Women.
• - Adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly, is
  often described as an International Bill of
  Rights for Women

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Hands On Finding Primary sources in the Library
Catalogue

• Try a keyword search in the library catalogue
  combining your subject (i.e. Women) with words
  that identify a particular genre
• correspondence
• diaries
• personal narratives
• interviews
• sources
• travel

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Digital Collections of Primary Documents

• Defining Gender - 1450-1910 - collection of
  original rare primary documents relating to
  Gender Studies, sourced from libraries and
  archives around the world.

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Secondary Sources

• A source that comments on, analyzes, or otherwise
  relies on primary sources.

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Databases/Indexes

• A database is an organized collection of
  information, data or citations stored in
  electronic format that can be searched for
  specific information. (FULL TEXT) i.e. Womens
  Studies International
• An index is either a printed or electronic
  publication which lists citations to journal
  articles and books. (NOT FULL TEXT) i.e.
  Feminae Medieval Women Gender Index

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Exercise Search databases

• Womens Studies International
• Academic Search Complete
• Google Scholar
• Canadian Newsstand
• Try a search using a combination of the words
• Emilie Ouimet
• headscarf
• hijab
• Montreal
• schools
• Note Depending on the database, some of the
  above search terms will yield no results.

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Critically analyzing information sources
Initial appraisal

• Author
• Date of publication
• Edition
• Publisher

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How to critically evaluate sources

• Timeliness
• Authority
• Accuracy and completeness
• Objectivity
• Quality control
• Coherent organization
• Reasonableness

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Citations

• You need to cite what you find for your
  bibliography.
• Citation Styles
• APA (Social Sciences)
• MLA (English and other humanities)
• Chicago (History/Humanities)
• Help
• Womens Studies Subject Guide
• Diana Hackers website http//www.dianahacker.com
  /resdoc/
• Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
  http//owl.english.purdue.edu/

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Susan Paterson

• Tel [phone]
• Susan.Paterson_at_ubc.ca
• Thank you! Questions?
• - Images are from Creative Commons License of
  Flickr