While all Laidlaw Scholars will be presenting their research at the Columbia Undergraduate Research Symposium in the fall, what are the more immediate expectations that you have for your research? Are you writing a paper? Will your research be part of a larger scientific study? Do you hope to produce an annotated bibliography that you reflect on down the line? Is your research now the first phase of a project you’ll continue to work on throughout the year, and/or next summer? Now that we are nearing the one month mark of the program, please write about your expectations for your research
I hope to produce an article based on my findings. As I near the one month mark of the program, I’m beginning to understand that I won’t find answers to all of the questions my research raises—and that’s okay. After speaking with my research professor, I’ve realized that identifying patterns and uncovering new questions is a meaningful outcome in itself. Rather than trying to resolve everything now, I see this summer as the foundation for a longer-term project. Perhaps next summer, I can return to this work with a focus on answering the questions that have emerged from this first phase.
Why does your research matter? Explain the significance of the question you are investigating, and why you are interested in it.
My research matters in part because when I began my background reading, I quickly noticed how little scholarship existed on the topic. While femininity, feminism, and the Black female body have increasingly become subjects of serious academic inquiry, masculinity—especially Black masculinity—often remains underexplored. I believe studying masculinity is essential because the way it is constructed and performed, particularly within familial structures, has real consequences for women, children, and communities at large. I think masculinity and studying it in a historical context fascinates me because it helps me deconstruct why our contemporary world operates the way it does,and through my findings, maybe I can begin to reconstruct solutions to modern problems manifested by masculinity.