Writing Qualitative Research
SOCY 5161
Spring 2007
Writing Coach: Amy Wilkins
Office: 208 Ketchum Hall
303-492-7681
Office hours: MW 10-10:50 and by appt
Writing matters. Good scholars need to be able to communicate clearly and to have a grasp of the academic conventions (even if they intend to violate them). The qualitative writing course is designed to guide graduate students through the process of writing qualitative work. Students may be at any stage in the writing process, but the class will not focus on data collection and analysis. Instead, it will be a workshop in which we work together to think through issues of style, voice, authority, representation, and revision. The class is intended to prepare students to convey their ideas clearly, persuasively, and in a way that sparks interest.
Because I am new faculty here, I am equally unfamiliar with all of you. That means that I will need an introduction to your interests, concerns, skills, and work habits, just as you will need to get to know me, my expectations, and my style. Some of you will work better with me than others. Nonetheless, all of you should benefit from my experiences with both writing and academia, and from each other. Accordingly, this course will only work well if we are able to build community that bridges any personal differences you might bring to this course. In this course, you have responsibilities to your colleagues as well as to yourselves. That means that you take each others’ writing seriously, that you provide detailed, non-biting comments on each others’ work, and that you nurture each other as writers. It also means that you show up for class on time and prepared. I expect you to inform me if you can not make a class. Your final grades will reflect your commitment to the group as well as your development as an academic writer.
Course Expectations
1. Each of you will develop a piece of writing over the course of the semester. The piece may be an article, chapter, thesis, etc. The piece should be something that you will eventually prepare for publication, but I know that you are at different stages of the process. High quality publishable pieces, in my estimation, cannot be prepared in a semester, but some of you may be well along in the process. You will turn in your piece to me at the end of the semester. Your improved piece need not be perfect at that point (indeed, I’ve yet to read a perfect piece of writing; certainly, I always find things to improve in my own). I do, however, expect that the paper will reflect significant, sustained effort over the semester. To that end, you will be expected to work on your writing each week. We will “check in” at the beginning of each class. You should be prepared to “check in” with the class about what you have accomplished that week, and/or about difficulties you have encountered.
2. In this course,
you will work in writing teams of 3 to 4 people. Writing teams have two
responsibilities to each other: first, you will provide ongoing support and
feedback to other members of your group; second, you will hold each other
accountable as writers. Each week, members of the team will comment on one
members’ manuscript. Distribute your manuscript to the other team members (and to me) one
week before it will be discussed in class.
Each week, the team readers will comment on the manuscript for the first
hour (possibly longer) of the seminar. You should bring in your review—1-2
single-spaced, typed pages—on that student's paper and be
ready to read your comments aloud in class. I also encourage you to make comments in the
margins.
In addition, you will practice
writing responses to the reviews. When
you get a “revise and resubmit” on a manuscript, you will need to send a
detailed letter responding to the reviewers along with your revised
manuscript. In those letters, you explain
what you changed, what you didn’t, and why.
In this class, you will also need to include such a letter for each
subsequent round of reviews. That is,
the second (and third) time you come up for in-class review, you will need to
submit not only a revised manuscript, but also a letter documenting the changes
you made. I have included a letter that
I recently wrote as an example with this syllabus. You may also ask other faculty members for
examples of letters that they have written.
3. In addition to tackling writing basics, we'll examine the contexts in which academic writing gets done, work
habits, and the self. Although authors often think
of their writing problems as personal and
idiosyncratic, there are good sociological reasons for psychological blocks. (Becker’s book, in particular, addresses
this issue.) We can gain insights into our writing
problems by understanding them sociologically.
4. Finally, we will read exemplary writing to get a sense of what works, what doesn’t, and why, and to think about diverse styles of representation. I have chosen two ethnographies for us to begin with. After that, we will establish a course schedule for reading qualitative articles and/or chapters that you have chosen. On the day we discuss your piece, come to class with a written summary explaining why you chose the piece, what you like about it, and what you don’t, etc. Be prepared to discuss with the class.
The books for the course are
available at Word is Out Women’s Bookstore,
Becker, Howard S. 1986. Writing for
Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your
Thesis, Book, or Article.
Kleinman, Sherryl. 1996. Opposing Ambitions: Gender and Identity in
an Alternative
Organization.
Lamott, Anne. 1994. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.
Whyte, William Foote. 1993 (1943). Street Corner Society: The Social Structure
of an
Italian Slum.
Optional book:
DeVault, Marjorie.
1999. Liberating Method: Feminism and Social Research.