Postgraduate ColloquiumPostgraduate Colloquium

Research in Literary StudiesResearch in Literary Studies

Ruzy Suliza HashimRuzy Suliza HashimUniversiti Kebangsaan MalaysiaUniversiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

1 4 August 20091 4 August 2009

Assumptions

• In English studies it is common practice to assume that “in the end it’s about reading, about text. Provided you know your way around a library and how to find things out, it is a case of knowing your texts …” (William 2003: 14).

• But English studies is, and can be, much more than textual analysis. (Griffin 2005: 4).

What to Expect When you are Writing a What to Expect When you are Writing a ThesisThesis

• AT UKMAT UKM:– PhD thesis: 100,000 words or 350 pages– MPhil thesis: 60,000 words or 200 pages– MA thesis (9 units): 30,000 words or 100 pages

• EvaluationEvaluation: For MPhil & PhD: Original and significant contribution to Knowledge

• Ability to do research• MA: Systematic procedure of doing a significant

research • ability in reasoning and conducting research that is not

dependent on others.

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PhD thesisPhD thesis

• Represents a significant contribution to the field, displays the candidate’s ability to situate study within a discipline’s framework, and the findings of the research are worthy of publication at the international level

• Provides evidence of contribution to the field with a consistent level of originality

• 100,000 words / 300 pages

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Possible research areasPossible research areas• Postcolonial Literatures

– Subaltern, Diaspora• Malaysian Literature in

English• Children/Young Adult

Literature• Comparative Literature• Gender Studies• Literary Stylistics• Creative writing• Literature in Schools

• Biographies/Memoirs• Oral Literature• Occidental Literary Studies• Literature as performance• Literature and Multicultural

Studies• Literature and Translations

• Literature and Interdisciplinary Studies

• Literature and Popular Culture

• Literature and ICT

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ResearchResearch• Focus on theoryFocus on theory– Archetypal/Myth approach– Feminist/Gender approach– Cultural studies

• Focus on text/genreFocus on text/genre– Novel, short stories, drama, poetry, Children’s/Young Adult

literature, popular fiction, historical fiction, chick lit, biographies, travel writing, blogs, youtube, emails, social networks, etc.

• Focus on area/issueFocus on area/issue– Comparative/interdisciplinary studies, translations, – Identity, nationalism, representations, ‘otherness’, exoticism– Literature in education

• Creative projectCreative project

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Types of researchTypes of research

• QualitativeQualitative: Using library research and textual analysis based on selected theory/ies or framework

• QuantitativeQuantitative: Using statistical data gathered from texts or respondents

• QuasiQuasi: Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative tools or methods

Textual Analysis

• You deal with a text/ texts (depending on the scope of the research)

• Choose conceptual frameworks as your tools of analysis• Added dimension – using software as your method of

gathering data• Eg frequency of certain images in a poet’s body of works• Frequency of rural images in Muhammad Haji Salleh’s

poems• What the images show about his state of imagination

Research on Archives

• Study letters/ diaries/manuscripts/old printed materials

• Eg you want to study the changing format of women’s magazines

• Manuscript that has never been published• This requires you to spend time in

libraries/galleries

Numbers and Words (Quantitative Research)

• I’m sorry to say that I’m no use to you whatever. To my undying shame, I don’t even know what quantification is. And my computer is no more a word processor, but faster. I’m so sorry. I don’t even know who to refer you to. (Pat Hudson, 2005: 132)

Numbers and Words (Quantitative Research)

• Surveys : to study reading habits of youth• To study learning styles• To study blog patternsYou would have to find surveys on similar topics

and adapt accordinglyNeed for pilot to see the statistical significanceSample must be representative of the

population (30%)

Other quantitative research

• Dates, incomes, prices, wealth or inheritance prevalent in many literary texts (but so little research)

• Some of Jane Austen’s works look like cash registers (who is earning how much)

• These numbers can be tabulated in a graph from/ histogram

• A study of annual profit of Mills and Boons from 1945-1971

Possible topic

• To study of popularity of chick lit (Survey of who buys them, what are the sales like)

• Profiles of readers - teenagers, profesional women, middle-aged women, grandmothers?

• Status of Income/marital status• Correlate with the issues in the texts: Why is the

story of a woman who is successful, beautiful, sexually liberated who consequently becomes love sick and fulfils the stereotype of a conventional woman?

Interviews & Focus Group• Research on self-narratives/ perceptions towards certain issues• One to one interview ( study 5 women’s experiences of domestic

violence) – interviews carried at some length• Views of certain groups to a particular book/movie/ issue• Eg Construction of gender:• Focus group: Male/female 12-15 (rural); males/females 12-15 (urban);

Indian /Chinese/ Malay males (12-15); Chinese males • Reaction to Sepet (based on reviews which show Malays being shown as

“not very Malay”)• Get 3 groups of different components : Malay men/women (age

group/status/location)

Ethnographic research

• Qualitative strategy that relies on participation observation and interpretation of cultural behaviour

• Eg war narratives in Makassar• Printed form of Makassar war vs how it has been

told orally• The researcher spent a few months in Makassar to

familiarise with the people and customs and to get sloe to the gatekeepers of the tradition

Creative Writing

• If you have a creative streak or you have had stories published in some reputable anthologies – you may want to expand on this.

• Creative writing thesis: 3 parts• 1. The processes of literary production• 2. Your product (novella, short stories, poems, a play)• 3. Reflection/review of 1 & 2• See example: Noraini Md Yusof : “History into Fiction: A Study

of the Transformation Process in Literary Production”

Re-visioning/Intertextuality

• You look at the influence/ echoes of an older text/texts on another (new text)

• How? Sometimes there are epigraphs at the beginning of books

• Sometimes names of characters are familiar• Sometimes the titles of books are almost similar• Eg Si Tenggang’s Homecoming (original Si Tenggang, Pulang si

Tegang); Reading Lolita in Tehran; Jane Eyre & Wide Sargasso Sea, revisions of folk tales; revisions of Greek myths (eg Wong Phui Nam’s poems; Tuesdays with Morrie & Tuesdays with Bapak)

Comparative Literature

• Several parameters of comparison • Compare two texts that cross geographical

boundaries ( Malaysian text & American text that deal with similar issues) –

• Compare a text with other disciplines(anthropology/psychology/theology/music/film)• Compare original text and translation (you

must know the two languages fluently)

Action Research

• Action research is a term which refers to a practical way of looking at your own work to check that it is as you would like it to be. Because action research is done by you, the practitioner, it is often referred to as practitioner based research; and because it involves you thinking about and reflecting on your work, it can also be called a form of self-reflective practice.

Methodology

• Reflect on current scenario• Plan of action • Review of plan of action • 12 action research projects at PPBL

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Where to start? How to start?Where to start? How to start?• What are you interested in? e.g. Genre? Book? Theory?• Review topics/issues covered in MA courses• Relook your presentations and essays– Can they be further developed/explored?

• Look at past research done at PPBL, as well as those from Malay Studies, even Media and Communication, other Universities. – Establish state of research; Ensure no replication.– Inclusion as part of literature review.

• Talk to literature lecturers – tap into on-going research at PPBL

People and expertise/current research interests

• Ruzy Hashim – self-narratives of women (auto/biography, memoirs, blogs), chick lit, gender in literature

• Dr Noraini Md Yusof: re-visioning, narrating the nation, Occidental studies• Dr Zalina – translation, young adult literature• Dr Shanthini – Indian diaspora, multiple intelligences (ways of reading

literature)• Dr Raihanah – multiculturalism/ 1-Malaysia (MLE)• Mr Nackeeran – web-based learning, literature and ICT, teaching of

literature, language through literature)• Mr Ravi – Cognitive poetics (literature and nation building – MLE)• Cik Shahizah – Science as Narratives, Media Studies

Some tips

• You must be able to sustain your passion/ interest in the subject matter

• There is a supervisor who can guide you• There are enough materials at hand • You make the time and you have the energy• You can take criticisms/brickbats/input

constructively• You do not mind the solitariness /confusion that

accompanies thesis writing

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Too Big? Too Small?Too Big? Too Small?1. An analysis of the relationship between coloniser and colonised

in Embun the movie.2. Male-female relationships in the translations of selected

children’s literature3. From conflict to insight: A Zen-based reading procedure for the

analysis of fiction4. Producing a fiction reader for adolescent literature for KBSM

Form Four5. The trickster figure in selected Malay and American folk tales: A

comparative study6. Orientalism from Within: A Critical Study of Pandering and

Catering to the West in Three Contemporary Indian-English Novels.

7. An analysis of the protagonist’s dream of home in The Clay Marble by Mingfong Ho.

PhD thesis at the Literature Dept, Harvard University

• Poets of the Crossroads: Politics and the Deliberation of Poetry in the 1930s Susan Elizabeth Barba

• "Morals of the Story" and Narrative Demand: a Study in Yiddish and Hebrew Literature Dara Horn Schulman

• Speakers in the Latin Historical Epics of Twelfth-Century ItalyHenry Carl BayerleRethinking Truth After 'The Age of Extremes': An Analysis of the Chronotope of Anamnesis in Autobiographical Narratives by Pak, Kluger, and KogawaSeung-Hee JeonTongues Untied: Metaphors of Multilingualism in the Writings of Vladimir Nabokov, Jose Donoso, and Augusto Roa BastosEsther LibermanJuan Pablo Lupi

• Representation of the fat black woman’s body in literature of the Black DiasporaArticulating the Sexual Subaltern in the Caribbean Narrative

Examples from the Uni of Harvard• 2003-04 • Narratives of Collecting: Collecting Narratives

Raul Delgado-Rodriguez

Evolving Memories: Narrative Habits and Strategies of Survival Emmanuela Kantzia

Between Women: Desire in Caribbean LiteraturesKeja Lys Valens

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Examples from the Uni of Harvard• 2002-03

• The Birth of the Author: Oral Traditions and the Construction of Authorial Identity in Ancient Greece and ChinaAlexander Jamieson Beecroft

Rhetoric, Experience, and Identity in Frontier Writing and Mapping of the Americas Mark Kevin Burns

A Nation on Display:Russian Museums and Print Culture in the Age of the Great Reforms Ekaterina Dianina

Allegory, Allegoresis, and the Hermeneutics of Social Networks Daniel Alan Fried

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MA: Just right!MA: Just right!1. Harry Potter and Young Malaysian Readers2. Western representations of the Arabs after the 9/11 Acts: A

critical analysis of Lorraine Adam’s Harbour3. Promoting multicultural understanding through team-building in

Scorpion Orchid4. Patriarchy, female resistance and the many facets of Indian

women in Anita Nair’s Ladies Coupe5. A study of male intimacy in Karim Raslan’s works: ‘Heroes’, ‘Go

East!’ And ‘Neighbours’.6. Construction and deconstruction of Iranian women in Reading

Lolita in Tehran7. Female representation in two contemporary Young Adult texts8. An explication of images and cultural roles of female characters

in Yeap Joo Kim’s Of comb, powder and rouge

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Scope of MA thesisScope of MA thesis• Keep it Keep it small and small and manageable!manageable!– Textual analysis: Analysis of one or two novel(s) or

play(s)/ a collection of short stories or poems using appropriate theories

– Focus group: Analysis of text(s) looking at a particular issue e.g. depiction of multicultural society/symbolisms in identity creation

– Comparison of Pride and Prejudice and its adaptation into Bride and Prejudice.

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Prior to Writing Your proposalPrior to Writing Your proposal

• A systematic REVIEW systematic REVIEW of published works on the topic of your study

• Helps explain how, where and why your research fits into the bigger picture

• It exists to show other readers how you incorporate the work of others into your own work, and how your work fits into the established research and/or theories in the field

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Literature reviewLiterature review• Articles/books reviewed – relevant to the

problem being investigated? • Coverage of previous empirical and theoretical

studies – thorough? • Issues related to the problem – Clearly explained? – Discussed in a logical progression?

• The number of articles cited – is it fully sufficient for the task?

Formulating a research problemFormulating a research problem

• A research problem is expressed in the form of a question or statement that focuses on the precise factors that are to be observed

• Say exactly what you mean and say it in as few words as possible

• Be prepared to rework and reword your research problem until you get it right