WMST 3525: Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Senior Seminar

Keyword Search

For a keyword, or “All Fields” search:

• Use "quotes" for a phrase
  • “emily bronte” will find results with the phrase “emily bronte” but not those that have “emily smith” or “charlotte bronte”
• To find variant endings of a word, use * for truncation.
  • child* finds childhood, children and child’s, as well as child
• However, don’t shorten the root word too much, or you will also find irrelevant results.
  • poli* finds politics and political, but it also finds police and polite.
• Natural language searching does not work well in CLIO, although it does work in Google and many other search engines.  In Google, you can write a sentence like “What are the effects of large amounts of television watching on young children’s social skills?” However, in CLIO the search will only find the exact words you entered, so it is necessary to break up your question into its main concepts (words or phrases) and put AND between them.
  • television AND “young child*” AND “social skill*”
• Find as many synonyms as you can for your main concepts.  Think of different ways that the concept might be expressed in articles you want to find.  Write the synonyms with OR between them.
  • “young child*” OR “early childhood” OR preschool OR “pre-school” OR toddler*
• When doing complex Boolean Keyword searches in CLIO, the terms have to be written on one line
  • (“gender role*” OR “sex role*”) AND (medieval OR “middle ages”)

Refining a Search

• You can refine your results using facets, or categories, on the left of the search results.
  • Format – to find items by physical format, e.g. book, microfilm, online
  • Publication Date
  • Author
  • Acquisition Date
  • Location
  • Language
  • Subject – to find items about a topic
  • Subject (Region) – to find items about a place
  • Subject (Era) – to find items about a time period
  • Subject (Genre) – to find items by content type, e.g. correspondence, personal narratives, fiction
  • Call Number

Participatory Action Research (PAR) challenges the belief that only academics or trained professionals can produce accurate information, and instead recognizes information as POWER and puts that power in the hands of people seeking to overcome problems in their daily lives. PAR is a collective process of investigation, empowerment, and action. The people most affected by the problems, sometimes with the help of “experts”, investigate and analyze the issues, and ultimately act together to bring about meaningful, long-term solutions.

Ethnography/Auto-ethnography

One Definition, according to Duke University's Writing Studio: 
"Ethnography is a genre of writing common in the social sciences, especially anthropology.
A comprehensive study of a culture, an ethnography informs its reader through narrative immersion, often
using sensory detail and storytelling techniques alongside objective description and traditional interview
style. Ethnography cuts a middle path between journalistic travel writing and traditional scientific
objectivity, blurring the distinction between the two. Oftentimes ethnographers choose to use a first-
person perspective in their writing to acknowledge their presence as both observer and active participants
in the culture they are studying." Autoethnography is a form of ethnographic research in which a researcher connects personal experiences to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings.

Zines as Feminist Praxis

A zine, short for fanzine or magazine, is a DIY* subculture self-publication, usually made on paper and reproduced with a photocopier or printer. Zine creators are often motivated by a desire to share knowledge or experience with people in marginalized or otherwise less-empowered communities. -- (Barnard Zine Library Home Page)

Affective Methodologies

Critical Technocultural  Discourse Analysis