Previous
Events
2000-2001
Center for Interpretive and Qualitative Research
(CIQR -- "seeker")*
April 19 (TH), 2001
PRESENTATION: BY MR. GEORGE YANCY, MCANULTY FELLOW IN
THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
TITLE: THE MEANING OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY THROUGH THE QUALITATIVE
MODALITY OF INTERVIEWING
ABSTRACT: The American Philosophical Association officially acknowledged African-American philosophy as a sub-discipline in 1987. In 1991, The APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience was specifically created to address philosophical issues and concerns unaddressed by mainstream Anglo-American and European philosophers. African-American Philosophers, 17 Conversations was inspired through the politics of recognition, that is, to recognize, render visible, the lives and philosophical concerns of African-American philosophers. Yancy's thesis is that the Cogito is always already situated and that by "separating philosophical thought," as pragmatist Richard Shusterman has argued, "from the lived context of the philosopher could constitute a gross distortion of its actual meaning and value." Yancy will discuss his first book, African-American Philosophers, 17 Conversations (Routledge, 1998), which was named an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice in 1999. He will discuss many of the assumptions that informed the text, and how these assumptions are concurrent with his understanding of the self as homo narrans and homo significans.
He will discuss the motivations that led to this text, and talk not only about its philosophical significance, but its political and racial significance as well. He will also discuss how, through his 17 conversations, certain unanticipated patterns emerged concerning the meaning of African-American Philosophy; what it means to do philosophy as embodied within Black skin; how African-American women philosophers assess their positions, identities, and concerns within the male dominant field of philosophy; why there are so few Blacks in philosophy, and what can be done to remedy this; and more. Yancy will also discuss the qualitative dimensions of the interviewing process in terms of its interpretive emphasis on how individuals make sense and meaning of their lives within a contingent context. Indeed, he will explore how, through the narrative process, the past, present and future are all hermeneutically open and dynamic. Yancy sees himself, as interviewer, as just another actant/actor within the complex matrix of the interviewing process. Lastly, his text creates an intertextual dialogue between the interviewees and attempts to humanize the face of philosophy.
Feb. 22 (TH), 2001
PRESENTATION: BY DR. LISA LOPEZ LEVERS, COUNSELING, PSYCHOLOGY,
AND SPECIAL EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
PRESENTATION TITLE: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF TRADITIONAL
HEALING AND REHABILITATION SERVICES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA: CROSSCULTURAL
IMPLICATIONS
ABSTRACT: This study provides an ethnographic analysis of traditional healing practices and rehabilitation services in Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe. While rehabilitation services delivery systems are emerging in Lesotho and Swaziland and exist at a somewhat more advanced stage in Zimbabwe, it has been difficult to assess -- based on limited available information -- whether the infrastructure for those services is linked more closely to traditional healing methods or to the modern methods endorsed by the Western donor organizations that provide assistance in those countries and that initiated some of the rehabilitation services there. The analysis of data gathered in this investigation is based on a combination of multiple case study and participatory action research strategies designed to close in on the interaction of traditional healing practices with disabilities and rehabilitation services in southern African culture. Such a preliminary analysis generates a knowledge base that supports further analysis of the social construction of disability in relationship to paradigms of illness and disease as elaborated in the ethnomedical literature. The outcome of such an analysis supports the consideration and development of ethnorehabilitation and psycho-ecological pluralism, constructs that are identified as results of this study and that warrant further investigation and explication.
Jan. 18 (TH), 2001
PRESENTATION: BY Dr. GARY SHANK, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
TITLE:THE MIRROR, THE WINDOW, AND THE LANTERN
ABSTRACT:: In a recently completed introductory QUALITATIVE METHODS' text that I have written for Prentice Hall, I was struck by the need to identify a vision for qualitative research that works in concordance with other visions of empirical inquiry. Toward that end, I came up with the threefold metaphor of the mirror (describing Greek and medieval empirical approaches), the window (describing the scientific approach), and the lantern (describing the qualitative approach). By describing qualitative research as "the systematic empirical inquiry into meaning," the lantern approach becomes the metaphor for seeking hidden, obscured, or poorly understood meanings. What do these metaphors say about the conduct, the nature and the logic, of empirical inquiry? At what point do we accept these metaphors as guides, and at what point do we need to set them aside?
Nov. 16 (TH), 2000
PRESENTATION: BY Dr. JUDITH BOWMAN, MARY PAPPERT SCHOOL
OF MUSIC
TITLE:MASTERS IN MUSIC EDUCATION ONLINE: PERSPECTIVES
ON ONLINE LEARNING
ABSTRACT:: Contemporary graduate programs in music education need to be responsive to the needs of working professionals; the online Master of Music in Music Education program was created to address this need. This presentation describes the online teaching and learning experience as documented over a period of three semesters and offers student and instructor perspectives. Student perspectives are derived from course evaluations, interviews, and informal comments. Instructor perspectives include parallels with face-to-face teaching, evaluation, and reflections on the challenges of teaching music courses online. The data highlight both advantages and challenges of online learning in music and help determine the direction of future development.
Oct. 19 (TH), 2000
PRESENTATION: BY Drs. ORLANDO VILLELLA and RHONDA
HARRISON, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
TITLE: ALTERNATE VIEWS OF SUCCESS: TWO VIEWS FROM EDUCATIONAL
RESEARCH
ABSTRACT: The concept of success has become increasingly high stakes in the field of education. Teachers and students, along with entire school districts, are driven to produce higher standardized test scores in order to compete for state and national resources. Dr. Harrison has examined differing forms of success in conjunction with early childhood education. She used personal memoir, historical case studies, and field interviews as her data sources. Dr. Villella conducted a series of 10 interviews with a former superintendent, extracting from those interviews a series of "fables" of past and present successes, using the Italian novelist Italo Calvino as his guiding model. Taken together, these studies show the promise of qualitative research within education for bringing new and alternative ways of looking at important issues and topics.
SEPT. 14 (TH), 2000
PRESENTATION: BY PROFESSOR ELLEN OLSHANSKY, CHAIR, NURSING
PHD PROGRAM
TITLE: A PARADOX OF DATA-BASED FINDINGS AND INTUITIVE
PROCESSES: WHEN A CONCEPT DEFIES MEASUREMENT
ABSTRACT: After conducting a series of qualitative (grounded theory) studies on women's experiences of infertility as well as working clinically as a counselor for infertile persons, I am now exploring, through a triangulated study, the concept of depression in new mothers with a history of infertility. This presentation emphasizes the intellectual challenges that I am experiencing in "measuring" something that makes intuitive sense, but that seems to defy measurement. Discussion will focus on the strength of qualitative methods in discovering and describing findings that are often too subtle to be measured.
