This is a proposed honors project in a 6th semester (if semester 1 is Spanish 1, and students do not take accelerated or summer courses) introduction to Cultural Studies for the Hispanic world. Professor Zero’s reaction to the proposal was stated more politely but it was, “That is not science!” Student did not understand and Professor Zero has not invented a way to communicate this so as to be understood while remaining kind.
The proposal is to inverview four women from four different Spanish speaking countries, on these questions:
1. What is the stereotypical woman from your country like? Are you like that? How or how not?
2. What is the stereotypical U.S. woman like, according to you?Then statistics on the status of women in the relevant countries (e.g. number of women employed, in government, and so on) will be looked up and compared and contrasted to what these women say.
“What bibliography do you have or do you expect to seek?” “Is this an ethnography, a sociological study, or…?” was another. “Do you expect to demonstrate something about stereotypes, or about common misconceptions, perhaps? Do you think it is possible with such a small sample size?” was still another. The student is steadfast and says statistics on the status of women is a good bibliography … and does not want to write an essay, but create an alternative-format project from this data. I want to know where to look for a good study that interviews people and examines … ideology … like those Brazilianist ethnographies on perception of “race.”
What can I suggest to this student to improve the project? The issue is that regular, not just honors students are doing projects in this class and this proposal would not be acceptable even for a regular student because. it. is. not. science. I will accept simple projects such as, “How does Picasso’s Guernica communicate?” or much else. How can the project above be reformulated such that the student can study [women’s perception of themselves and their situation, and the possible gap between these perceptions and certain measures of the conditions of their lives]?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
She could do an annotated bibliography on the topos of “El ángel del hogar.” That would give her a grounding in the ideology of stereotypical gender roles. Then she could look at contemporary women’s magazines from a Latin American country and see what aspects are still carried forward from that. Working with “stereotypes” is the hallmark of very weak students, because that is the first thing that they think of. Tell her, “what I think you are really interested in is the ideology of gender. Here’s how a more mature researcher might approach this topic.”
O gracias, this is brilliant. I have already suggested investigating gender roles on tv and she accepted this. I have never before had an actual Spanish major want to work on stereotypes.
I think she wants to make a video or a collage and that an annotated bibliography will still be too stodgy for her but I will have to force it down.
I will also have to face down her boyfriend, my anti-research colleague, great language teacher, and her program director, who also does not understand research.
She has evidently learned from both of them that in “Spanish” you are “learning a language” and is thinking of interviewing people in the way people are interviewed to get authentic voices for a good-enough language textbook.
I have more colleagues in department who think this way: if it is an undergraduate, teach them language with culture and literature on the side but no real academic skills. If it is a graduate student, teach them how to summarize research done by others. Dealing with the results of this drives the rest of us to distraction…
This is also someone trying very hard to avoid writing. That is the point of the “alternative format” presentation and of not doing any written research beyond copying down a few numbers.
Very, very true.
So now, I have e-mailed. Blogging really does help with work.
Greetings —
I’ve gotten a chance to think about your project and here are some ideas.
CRITIQUE OF ORIGINAL IDEA
1. I am wondering if it is possible to find an ethnographic study that does something like what you want to do. I am looking right now, for instance, at Robin E. Sheriff, Dreaming Equality: Color, Race, and Racism in Urban Brazil (Rutgers 2001) which does ethnographic interviews on attitudes toward race and contextualizes these with a discussion of the actual situation and also dominant and semi-official discourses on it. It would be good to find something like this on ideologies of gender roles. Because of having multiple informants and more context, she is able to do something quite nuanced. You, of course, are not writing a book, but it is still worth seeing how this kind of study is done.
a. Stereotypes may contain grains of truth, both about their object and about the person repeating them. But a research or interpretive project that seeks simply to confirm or deny a stereotype, based on only four interviews, is going to be thin. You need to give yourself more material so that you have findings with meaning.
b. Other-than-essay formats are all right but I notice you are planning so far to transcribe interviews and copy statistics: i.e. not only no writing, but also no interpretation or analysis. What we are trying to do in this class is learn to analyze cultural objects, in context. In an honors project, you want to do this to the honors level, i.e. in a way that is at least to some degree scholarly. That means more sources, more context, and some sort of interpretive or analytical activity.
SUGGESTION / EXAMPLE OF HOW TO REVISE AND EXPAND THIS IDEA
2. In terms of issues, I think what you are really interested in is not stereotypes as much as the ideology of gender.
a. Here’s one idea for how to approach that / how to contextualize and bring more to your interviews, that is feasible at the undergraduate level:
i. Do an annotated bibliography on the topos of “El ángel del hogar.” (Google that, but also use it as a key word in a library search; amazing things will come up, like this slightly old, but good book: http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft0z09n7kg;brand=ucpress) This would give you a grounding in the ideology of stereotypical gender roles.
ii. Then look at contemporary women’s magazines and tv/film from the Hispanic world, and your interviews, and see what aspects of the “ángel del hogar” ideal are still carried forward from that. You could also consider factors such as social class, race, and region, since “indigenous woman” and “white woman” in the same country may be located quite differently on the gender-role spectrum.
b. I am not saying you have to do the “ángel del hogar” topos. I have an idea it will really work for what you want to do, but it could be something else.
N.B. I do not know if you are friends with — but she does not have a topic yet and this area is big enough for two. You could work in tandem if you want to.
Felicidades —
P Z