Center of Gravity
One of my professors talked about identifying the “center of gravity” of my dissertation project. By this she meant the main question driving it, the main way of tackling the question. We’re all interested in a lot of things, and want to include them all in one study, but for a dissertation project we need to hone in on one slice of the interest. Especially for the field research. Once we have collected our data we can start circling out again. But doing good research requires focus.
The center of gravity of my intellectual interest is on cultural difference and commonalty, how people learn about them, teach about them, come to understand what they mean. Government policy, personal interactions, community life. All ways people might encounter or learn about cultural difference. Studying immigration is my way of getting at this, since it almost always raises questions of difference, sameness, identity.
This is very mushy sounding. But I feel like in working on designing the dissertation, I’m revisiting my passions, why I’m in graduate school in the first place, as a way of ensuring the project I do will be meaningful.