In my bachelors I was a bit of an academic slut - or flighty could be the polite term - but it was called both ways by many an academic friend (we feminists seem to like to reclaim words, I turned several shades of red the first time it was said to me and then slowly accepted it as a large bit true). I was a honors double major in Classical Studies and First Nations Studies with a minor in Women’s Studies and Feminist Research. It started because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to study and then ended with me deciding that I wasn’t going to choose. While my many disciplines did didn’t get along on much, they all seemed to LOVE content analysis with a health dose of text analysis to help it out.
Having said all that, I think I was doing it badly all along. I have never actually seen content analysis separated out the way that the Thomas did it. The more that I look back at the undergrad approach, the more I realize that methods were more or less stumbled into rather than selected with a specific aim. To see what the aim and benefits and the problems and pit falls of this method makes me pause to reconsider much of my work. The field of Classics is truly a field of interpretation. It is based on translation of primary source text from ancient - and often dead - languages and plays connect to dots with archaeological finds. The aspect of First Nations Studies and Gender Studies that I focused on was film and pop culture representation and its relationship to government policy (exciting I know). Both of these seem to happily lead to content analysis but I worry about many of the ways I built research and arguments outside of a methods foundation. Prior to this class I think that I viewed methods a bit like the title page; something to come back to and think about after you had finished it. Now I think I might want to date a couple of methods and treat them to a drink or two.
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