Monday, April 13, 2015

Studying the (Relatively) Unstudied

I need to find an adviser.

My school assigned one to me, of course, but I have to have a second. An external adviser, to help with the subject matter of my dissertation. See, I'm in an interdisciplinary field -- Information Studies -- and part of my program involves taking courses in a co-related area, in addition to the external adviser search.

So what's the problem? Why can't I just ask one of my sociology professors to do it?

I could, technically. But none of the classes I'm taking is exactly where I want to focus my research. I want to write my dissertation on the fat acceptance movement, but classes that address it pretty much do not exist, so I've been taking sociology classes that relate to other areas of marginalization that intersect with the body. I took sociology of power last summer, I'm taking race and ethnicity right now, and I will take sociology of gender this coming summer.

The soci of power professor was just this side of hostile about my doing my final project on the size acceptance movement, on top of the time she announced to the class off-hand that she was putting an appetite suppressant in her water bottle. So that's definitely not going to work. My current professor is much better, and was extremely receptive to my doing my final paper on race and body image. I really like her and the class, but her research areas aren't close to my interests for this project at all.

My last hope for finding someone in these classes will be the gender course this summer. If that professor doesn't work, I'm sort of at a loss. I guess I'll have to try and find someone in the area that does focus on fat studies or something related to that and meets the qualifications for being an external adviser (I have to find out exactly what those are).

I have until winter to do so, but I'd like to get the person lined up as soon as I can, if for no reason other than to lift the stress off myself.

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