Harper’s Object Annotation

The last time I met with my Core 2 class in the classroom, we had to present our ideas for our object annotations based on the annotations Harper’s Magazine periodically runs.  I waited anxiously for my turn to come, my legs bouncing up and down with nervous energy.  This will be the final project before we begin work on our “final” projects for the class, which means the end of the semester is quickly approaching (not such a good thing at this point when I could use a little more time to work).

As Dr. Wolff motions for me to take my turn, I hold up a picture of a digital voice recorder typically used on the paranormal investigations shows on television and explain what I hope to explore in the call-outs.  As soon as I finish, a sea of hands shoot up to add suggestions and ask questions.  After a lengthy discussion, I’ve settled on the following topics for my call-outs:

• A brief history introducing the concept of trying to capture EVP (electronic voice phenomena with a digital voice recorder, the rising popularity of ghost hunting reality shows, and the skeptics’ view of the industry’s growing popularity.
• How this theory came to be (and that is partially due to Thomas Edison, oddly enough) and the Spiritualism movement that took place from the 1840s to the 1920s.
• The growing billion-dollar ghost hunting industry which includes reality shows, books, DVDs, tours and special appearances, apparel, and equipment.
• Comparison of both the believers’ and skeptics’ argument for why EVP are and are not the dead trying to communicate with us.
• What an EVP actually sounds like and what to expect from one
• Lastly, I hope to touch on some of the reasons why people have become so fascinated with the paranormal and communicating with the dead.

Class will be meeting online in groups via Google Docs and Twitter this week, and we’ll be peer reviewing one another’s work.  It should be interesting, to say the least.  The last time we met online in the beginning of the semester, I was overwhelmed and had trouble keeping up with the conversation.  I feel better equipped for this round, but keep your fingers crossed for me anyway!

The “Thingness” of Things

Tuesdays class had some… interesting discussions about the “thingness” of things, and before you ask if we were all high that day, the answer is no.  Lorraine Daston’s book Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science asked us to “imagine a world without things” (p. 9), something I couldn’t do without thinking about how boring and bland the world would be.  One of my classmates, Meghan, said she kept picturing us bobbing around this expanse of whiteness with no direction and no ability to communicate about…well anything really.  Think about it, if there were no things to talk about,describe, compare, and contrast to other things what would there be to talk about?

Daston also challenged readers to hear what objects, like photograph, can tell us about culture, values, and the rich history embedded within its very creation.  In fact, Daston proposes that “Talkative things instantiate novel, previously unthinkable combinations.  Their ‘thingness’ lends vivacity and reality to new constellations of experience that break the old molds” (p. 24).  Many such objects resist barriers and move across classification boundaries, boundaries that we place them in to give them more meaning.  What would these objects be without us to give meaning to them, to invent them, or re-innovate them?

One way to explore the “thingness” of such things is through a document analysis.  Harper’s magazine  includes these every once in a while in their issues, and we will have to find an object that is somehow related to our research and do the same.  To find an object that embodies associative thinking and give people a chance to glimpse into the cultures we’ve been delving into all semester.  So, here’s to things that talk.

Field Research: Navigating Uncharted Waters

Last Tuesday’s Core 2 class dealt mostly with updating everyone on our research process and discussing the results of our excursion out to the bowling alley the week before (see previous post, Core 2 Heads to the Bowling Alley, for an in-depth look at my fieldnotes and transcription).

We also discussed several of the transcription methods covered in Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes by Robert . Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw.  An ethnographer’s task, through “a deeper immersion in other’s world,” is to discover the fluidity of other’s lives and enhance his sensitivity to interaction and process” (p. 2), and then present his experiences in a way others can easily understand through fieldnote transcritions.  In order to produce an engaging and detailed  transcription, it is necessary for the ethnographer to take detailed and extensive fieldnotes of their observations and experiences that “reconstruct each moment from selected details which they remembered or had jotted down” (p. 67).

The trip to the bowling alley also gave me the opportunity to practice my interviewing skills, which as I mentioned in Building Bridges: A Guide to Postmodern Interviewing, I was concerned about.  I strived to keep my nerves in check and just chat with the bowlers rather than grill them for the information I needed in order to complete my assignment, and I was able to balance between actively observing what was happening around me while interacting with the environment as well.

Now comes the real test as I plan more trips and interviews (a schedule of people and places for the interviews to follow) for my ghost hunting research.  The bowling alley was a trial run, and now the real investigation is taking shape.  Wish me luck!

Core 2 Heads to the Bowling Alley

According to Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes by Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw, “ethnographers often want to write [or transcribe their fieldnotes from their jottings] because they realize that writing is a way of seeing, that a lived experience is not only preserved but also is illuminated through writing about it” (p. 63).  Thursday night’s Core 2 class set out to do just that.

Rather than meeting in the classroom, my classmates and I trekked out to the local bowling alley, Glassboro Bowl and Recreation Center, to conduct some field research.  Dr. Wolff split us into groups of four, and we were set loose to try to uncover as much information about bowling as we possibly could.  My group made our way over to the side of the alley where the women’s leagues were bowling and began to observe.  After about 20 minutes of jotting down our thoughts, we each chose a topic we would explore on our own.  I chose bowling events, tournaments in particular.  The following are my field jottings:

Transcription:

League night at the bowling alley was a new experience for me.  As I enter the alley, a blast of sounds hit my ears.  BOOM-THWACK-PRRUMM.  Over and over again, alley after alley.  After I grow accustom to the noise, I next noticed the stares.  In a room full of a variety of characters, my classmates and I clearly stick out as the misfits. I’ve only been bowling a handful of times, and I’ve never seen bowling teams practicing.  As a result of my curiosity, I decided to try to discover as much as I could about the bowling events these teams would participate in.

I assumed that league night was reserved for people who were serious about bowling (I didn’t understand that there was a difference between being part of a league and being a professional bowler), but the women I was about to converse with viewed league night as “a chance to get away from our kids and husbands for a night,” one member of the Looney Tunes admits while chuckling with her teammates.

Some of the ladies do take bowling very seriously, but the Looney Tunes enjoy being part of the league because it provides an escape from their daily lives and routines.  When I asked if they looked at league night as a chance to improve their skills for tournaments, Pam shook her head and laughed, “ Oh no, we look at it more as a chance to hang out, drink, and have a good time.”

Sue, who was the member most knowledgeable about tournament season, which takes place between February and May, relayed to me that this your the 66th Annual States Championship Tournament are being held in Deptford this year.  “It’s nice,” she continued, “because States are usually held in North Jersey.”  And when I questioned as to why that happens, she replied “Well, there are bigger alleys up there.  It’s not really common down here for women to be interested in bowling, so there isn’t as much space.  There’s a lot of women you have to fit in one alley all at the same time, and we just don’t have the space.”

With Nationals just around the corner, most of the leagues are looking forward to the trip.  “It’s more like a vacation than a tournament,” Beth said as she took a gulp from her soda before retrieving her ball from the ball return, “we’re not really concerned about winning.  We’re just going to have fun.”

Pat adds, “We’re really looking forward to next year’s tournament in Reno.  Every three years we go back there, and its always such a good time.  They used to have a banquet at the end of the tournament, but now they give out cash prizes instead.  Most women would prefer to leave with some money, but I do miss the banquets.  They were always a good time.  It was a chance to get to know some of the other women in the league.  I met a lady who was 101-years-old, and she was having a blast.  She had a better score than some of the younger league members!”

The tournament locations are decided by bid.  Similar to the Olympics, cities cast their bid to host the competition, and whichever city desires to play host is award the opportunity.  There are no qualifications or specifications that need to be met in order to compete in the tournaments.  All a bowler needs is to have played for at least 21 games over the two years preceding the match to establish an average, and of course, be part of a sanction league, which members pay dues and fees to go into the pot of cash prizes awarded at the competitions.

Most of the women in the league average a score between 115 and 200.  While participating in tournaments, the women are divided, so they can compete against women with scores similar to theirs.  Beth chimes in, “People who average below 140 have a chance to win too.  At States, at least six people will win cash for their highest score rather than just the highest scores for the tournament.  It’s really a fun league that tries to make sure everyone has fun.”

This coming weekend, the Looney Tunes will compete in the 11th Annual Queens Tournament in Woodstown.  With one hundred dollars on the line for first prize, some bowlers may feel pressured to bowl their best.  Not the Looney Tunes.  Pat shrugs her shoulders and says, “It’s just another afternoon with the ladies.”

An additional part of the night’s assignment was to follow another student, whom Dr. Wolff assigned to us, and observe his or her strategy in the field.  I was assigned Meghan.  At first, she seemed to just be wondering around, taking in her surroundings and chatting with some of our classmates, but after that, she went into the Pro Zone and was busy chatting with Jason, the high school boy who worked the counter back there.  Since I didn’t even know that section of the alley existed, I’m thankful to Meghan for inadvertently pointing it out to me.

Overall, the night was a great chance to practice observing and taking fieldnotes, which is a lot more difficult than I thought it was going to be.  And now, it’s time to take my skills out on the road to find some ghosts!

Building Bridges: A Guide to Postmodern Interviewing

Tuesday night’s class was completely dedicated to developing relationships with people in the field we have chosen to research and basic interviewing tips to keep in mind as we continue our research.  One of the main and most reiterated points was to keep the interview casual and conversation-like rather than a formal question-answer “research procedure” Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein say in their first chapter of Postmodern Interviewing.  They go on to say that “it would therefore be a mistake to treat the interview-or any information-gathering technique-as a simple research procedure…It is not just a way of obtaining information…” (p. 29).

Another point that was heavily discussed in the book was the importance of not treating the interviewee as merely a vessel that contains that information that needs to be extracted.  The people we have to go out and interview are just that: people.  This point really resonated with me because I remember when I interviewed my mother to create an oral history, she was so apprehensive about doing the interview.  So, in an effort to try to calm her down, I had to back my way into the interview.  Several of my classmates agreed that charging into the interview is the quickest way to my the interviewee feel pressured and uncomfortable.  Therefore, before I can even consider interviewing anybody for my project, I have to start building some bridges through Twitter, blogging, going out and getting to know the people in the field, and once that relationship is developed then I can start trying to set up interviews.

Once I have some interviews planned, rather than coming with a list of prepared questions, the interview should sort of develop organically; go with the flow, ask follow-up questions to interesting points brought up in the interview to show the interviewee I’m listening to them, and build up to a gradual coverage of all the information I wanted to know.

I’m especially nervous about this whole process.  I’m not the most outgoing, social person in general or all that comfortable with talking to people that I don’t know, and it’s my job to make the person I’m interviewing feel comfortable opening up to me.  How will I ever do this?  Every time I think about it I can feel my shoulder bunching with tension and the pressure of this project weighing them down.

If anybody has any tips about how to navigate these uncharted waters, please pass them on.

Ethical Research and Phenomenology

One of the readings for last Tuesday’s Core 2 class, Ethics and Politics in Qualitative Research by Clifford G. Christians, posed a lot of questions about improving the IRB system, and at first I didn’t know why he would question the IRB process of receiving approval for conducting research.  Now, having read the article and gone to class to discuss it, I can see how for the type of research I’ll be conducting for this class, it really doesn’t fit.  One of the requirements needed for completing an IRB application is to prepare a list of questions that have to be approved of before the researcher can begin to conduct interviews.

The only problem with that is we can’t ask questions that we come up with on the spot…which is not good.

So, where does that leave my classmates and me?  Dr. Wolff had the solution: we’re not going through the IRB, which means we don’t have to fill out one of those exhaustive and extensive IRB applications!  Hooray!

Another article that we read was an excerpt from a book called Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design by John W. Creswell that explored the five different approaches to qualitative research.  One of them, phenomenology, sounded like it would fit perfectly my topic.  That is until I hit a pretty major snag in the description: “…investigators set aside their experiences, as much as possible, to make a fresh perspective toward the phenomenon under examination” (p 59-60).

Well, that’s not going to work.

While my topic does fit most of the criteria preferred for phenomenological research, it would be kind of impossible for me to separate out my experiences because my research will be primarily based on them.  And those experiences will fuel the creative piece that I’ll turn in at the end of the semester.

Yet again, Dr. Wolff came to the rescue.  He told us that having us try to narrow our research to fit into a specific set of criteria would be counterproductive; my last blog post discussed how my classmates and I are trying to expand the scopes of our research topics to obtain the most information possible.

So take that, research experts!

This type of research is all about operating outside of our comfort zones, beyond the limitations of typical research.  It’s all about thinking outside the box.  And our research will be better for it.

An Old Soul in the New Age: Stuck Between Worlds

As I sit down to write this post for my Core 2 grad class, I look up at the tabs I have open and see one for Facebook (which I haven’t checked in about 2 weeks), one for Twitter, several for my classmates’ blog pages, a YouTube video for Enrique Iglesias’ “Tonight (I’m Loving You)”, and my cell phone’s text message alert going off every few minutes.  I feel like I have technology induced ADD.

This age of instant information technology is wonderful for the multitude of research avenues made available to me, and I’m already seeing results that would never have been possible without the advent of technology.  But sometimes I wish I cold just turn everything off and get back to basics and writing.

This feeling was compounded when my Core 2 class was conducted online Tuesday night, courtesy of the Google Doc chat feature, instead of braving the freezing cold.  I sat at my computer a few minutes before class, savoring the calm before the messaging storm began, and marveled at how far technology has come.  My contemplation came to a halt when other members of the class signed on and began chatting with one another.  Several mentioned how this reminded them of signing on the AIM when they were younger (a mode of communication I have never used, strange, I know).  I tried to keep up with the conversation by commenting on a couple of people’s remarks, but I soon became overwhelmed with the different conversation threads and resigned myself to sit back and watch.

The majority of the class was dedicated to each of us being assigned another classmate’s topic and gathering links online to provide a starting point for them to work off of.

And then all hell broke loose.

While I was working to find useful links, others were doing that and posting updates on Twitter about what we were doing as a class, sharing pictures of their pets via TwitPic, and I felt like a hamster on a wheel, panting and trying to keep up.  I’m still struggling to keep up with the blog and Tweet assignments for the class: at least 2 blog posts a week and at least 2 Tweets a day (I actually have to write in my daily planner to Tweet as part of my homework).  And new apps available for iPads, iPhones, BlackBerrys, and Tabs, Androids make this easy, for those who are fortunate enough to have them.

Even though I was born in an age where everything is available at my fingertips (which is proving to be useful for the research I need to conduct, don’t get me wrong), I long for the days where people met face to face to hold conversations (minus text abbreviations and emoticons), or *gasps* sending handwritten letters to each other via the post office.

As a writer, my “free” time should be dedicated to…um…writing, but my time is so segmented between spending time on assignments for other classes and maintain my newfound online identity that it makes my head spin just to think about it.

The best solution, for me at least, is to dedicate time just to writing and have other time set aside for maintaining my Twitter, blog, emails, etc.

And for now, that’s the best I can do.

 

Haunting, haunting, who’s had a haunting?

Imagine sitting home alone reading a book and enjoying the quiet when the silence is shattered by heavy boot-falls pacing across the upstairs bathroom floor.

Today, with interest in all things paranormal reaching an all-time high (countless tv shows including Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and A Haunting; books like Weird NJ and many novels and teen fiction; and associations such as South Jersey Ghost Research among many others), this might sound like an excerpt from the latest paranormal romance novel or a clip from the newest ghost hunting television show.  This actually happened, and still happens very frequently along with several other strange activities, to me in my parents’ house.  Since then, I’ve been interested in ghost, hauntings, and ghost hunting.  I was surprised when ghosts were mentioned when I first came on a tour of Rowan.  During the tour, my guide revealed that there a number of ghosts who haunt the older buildings, including Elizabeth Tohill who was a drama professor from 1930 to 1956.  Although I’ve never had the courage to research it on my own, this seems like too good an opportunity to pass up.

Although my experience, which is probably pretty tame compared to other people’s experiences, is driving my interest, why are others interested in the subject?  Why do ghosts fascinate the living?  What other kinds of experiences have other people had?  Have they conducted any research based upon these experiences?  Where do people have these experiences?  How do other cultures/countries explain ghost activity/sightings?

While I have primarily written fiction, this topic could generate so many different genres that could work for my final piece.  If I did stick with fiction, there are a number of publications that publish fantasy short stories, including Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Leading Edge, and Tales of the Talisman, but I could see this piece also as a multi-genre that could incorporate pictures and sound bites. I’m hoping my research will generate a lot of experiential information, and fiction seems like it may be the best way to incorporate all of the the emotional and sensorial details in a way that will impact the story.

I’ve already started researching online just to get a feel for what information is out there (There is so much!), but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  I can research how early people began ghost hunting, why did they start, and so much more.  I would like to go on a few ghost hunts myself, and once I start connecting with people, I’ll get a better ides of where I can do that.

Now that I have a topic (breathes a HUGE sigh of relief), I’m excited to start researching!

Heart, Soul, and Objectivity

While discussing the pieces we had to read for Core 2 last night, I felt like I was having heart failure after I realized how much research (time, effort, energy, money, brainpower, etc.) went into writing every one of those articles.  The longer I sat on class, the more panicked I felt about conducting all of this research, a feeling that was only compounded after Dr. Wolff went over the requirements for our research proposals (due by Sunday, by the way).

My first thought: What the HELL am I going to write about?

My second thought: How am I going to be able to remain objective towards my topic after compiling months and months worth of research?

I remember while reading Amy Ellis Nutt’s piece and thinking how difficult it must have been for her to, after shadowing this man and his family for an extended period of time, remain objective towards her topic of research.  This story was her baby, something she nurtured from inception and watched it grow and flourish into the amazing article that it is today, but at some/multiple points while conducting her research, she must have had to remove all of her emotional attachment and examine her piece critically.

As a writer, I think that can be the most difficult thing to do.  To write is to put your heart and soul into every piece you create, and to take a step back and really think about what you’ve managed to do so far and how much farther you have to go can be a daunting task to undertake.

This class will be challenging, but I’m hoping it will push me to push myself more than I ever have before.

Now all I have to do is think of a topic and then I can start….