This seminar investigates the principles, ethics, and practices that constitute a range of methods used to conduct feminist research. The course has several aims. Throughout, we shall examine the conceptual, epistemological, and political underpinnings of different feminist methods. Emphasis will be placed on distinguishing feminist research methods, that is, those committed to examining and potentially transforming social inequalities that oppress women and other subordinate groups from those methods and epistemologies committed (whether explicitly or implicitly) to maintaining the status quo. The course will expose you a range of perspectives within feminist critiques of science and social science as well as a number of potential ways of designing feminist research in order to suit particular kinds of research problems, questions, and projects.

The course exposes students to the tenets of both logical positivism and naturalism, which maintain that value-and theory-neutrality in research are desirable and tenable stances for researchers in all stages of research. Feminist critiques of and alternatives to positivism will be discussed. The goal will be to ask what is at stake in developing alternatives to positivistic and naturalistic methods of research. A central aim of the course is to inspire you to think critically about how researchers produce socially and politically interested texts that are as much about `cultural selves' located within particular power relations as they are about `cultural others.'

We will discuss whose interests are served by particular research projects and methods. These issues are inseparable from the practical ones of choosing a research problem, developing a research design suitable to the problem/project, grappling with different kinds of data (including interview and participant observation data or data collected through action or participatory research) and problems of analysis. Dilemmas such as deciding whether to "study up" or "down" in the power structure, how we obtain informed consent from those we research, deciding to whom we are accountable in the report of research at various stages, and for/with whom we speak and write will be discussed.

The course will be run as a workshop, combining lectures, occasional films and/or guest speakers with student led critiques and discussions of the readings. Introduction to rudimentary field work skills such as observation, participant observation, open-ended interviewing, learning to critique one or more kinds of research reports, including survey, experimental and qualitative/interpretive research will be among the practical skills gained in the course. The course will concentrate much more on qualitative/interpretive research than on survey or experimental research since this is the expertise of the instructor and the basis for much of the current work within feminist epistemology and methodologies.

While some attention will be paid to introducing students to field work, there will not be enough time for students to develop full-blown research projects and carry them through to conclusion. Rather, the course is designed to whet your appetite to the complexities of feminist research practice and the inter-relations among questions of ethics, methods, and the politics of power relations in research.

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