It’s My Time to Shine!
Reading article after article about researching has really beaten the ideas in my head. This is both a bad and good thing. It’s bad because it feels like I’ve been listening to a broken record about the same concepts by different authors. Yet, it’s good since I REALLY understand the purpose of research and how to do it as best as possible. More importantly, it has caused me to think about topics that would be interesting to research. So, the good outweighs the bad.
How Readings Have Helped
One of the most helpful readings was Katherine Tirabassi’s “Journeying Into The Archives: Exploring The Pragmatics of Archival Research”. The main principles discussed outlined key points to keep in mind when researching specifically in archives. The principles of selectivity, cross-referencing, categorization, and closure perfectly capture what’s needed to execute archival research well. To me, the most insightful principle is that of cross-referencing. Tirabassi explains that cross-referencing is useful to fill in gaps and provide much needed context for documents that seem to lack such information. Doing so will create a better, fuller source for my research project.
And My Research Topic is…(drum roll please?!)
Within the history of Santa Clara University, I want to look at the journey its racial and culture diversity. Being part of the Asian Pacific-Islander Student Union through the Multicultural Center has given me a little insight to what Santa Clara students have experienced as far as diversity and inclusion. During weekly meetings, we have discuss movements such as Unity 4, a series of solutions to tackle discrimination and negativity towards certain student groups.The name, Unity 4, derives from past Unity movements about issues with diversity in the 1980s and 1990s. Submitted to the school board in 2015, Unity 4’s important documents have sparked cooperation among students of the Multicultural Center as it has been updated to suit campus’s most current concerns.
Here’s the link to SCU’s Original Unity 4!
Thanks for reading!