Research Portfolio

Book Source #1--Eyes right! --Challenging the Right Wing Backlash By Berlet, Chip.

APA Citation

Berlet, C. (1995). Eyes right!: Challenging the right wing backlash. Boston,        Mass.: South End Press.

MLA Citation (7th ed.)

Berlet, Chip. Eyes Right!: Challenging the Right Wing Backlash. Boston, Mass.:   South End Press, 1995. Print.

I believe this book will be a great source for the research project. The book covers a range of topics but has a section specifically on racism, Xenophobia, and White Panic. I have decided that for my research question that instead of arguing that the KKK were showing fear of African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement specifically,  but instead explain how they began showing fear of races over the years.

Book Source #2-- The human tradition in the New South by Klotter, James C.

APA Citation

Klotter, J. C. (2005). The human tradition in the New South. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

MLA Citation (7th ed.)

    Klotter, James C. The Human Tradition in the New South. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005. Print.

I was only able to look at a few pages in this book, but from what I read I believe will be very useful in connecting Xenophobia and racism (especially towards African Americans). Part of my research question is explaining or arguing that the KKK showed fear of African Americans. A quote from the book stood out to me… “two hundred members of the Original Knights defected from the organization to form the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. [The leader of that group] told his followers that he had secret information that African troops planned to invade Mississippi from Cuba.” This source explains another time that the KKK were fearful of the race and not acting out of pure hate.

                                                  

Monday 9/24

Why is peer-review important?

Having work peer-reviewed can be very important to a researchers work. Scientists or whoever the author of the work is wants to be sure that their information is accurate. What better way to check that than to have peers/colleagues/other scholars to check or peer-review your work to help weed out any wrong information.

--I did read though that even though the work may be peer-reviewed, (maybe by multiple people) that does not mean that the written reviews are correct. Many times when getting work peer reviewed the person that did the review may be completely clueless on how to review someone else’s work (even those that are highly intelligent may not know how to properly review). Along with the potential for errors they one reviewing may also be very biased on a subject giving reviews that attempt to change the work to fit their own views.

What are some ways that I can tell if an article is peer-reviewed or scholarly?

You can tell when an article is peer-reviewed/scholarly because they are usually written by scholars, they show references. And if I am understanding the readings correctly most articles that are scholarly are usually peer-reviewed to get the opinions of colleagues on whether or not the information seems accurate. Another way to tell if a work is scholarly is to look at the terminology that is used. Scholarly work uses more technical words.

When do you want to use peer-reviewed research in your work?

I would imagine that everyone would want to use peer-reviewed research in all work. In doing research though it is still important to double check the facts because even peer-reviewed work can be wrong.

In what ways do I engage in informal and or formal peer-review in my own personal and researching life?

I usually engage in more informal peer-review when doing work. For example, when working on narrowing our research topic for the group project my group kind of bounced ideas off of each other and helped one another in narrowing subjects and giving correction or suggestions. I do not usually use informal peer-review or at least not since my freshman year English classes where we would cover our names up and switch papers to get several peer-reviews and reviews from our professor. I know that in the past peer-review has been both helpful and harmful. Even in my college courses I have been given reviews that were horribly wrong. In both school and the professional work engaging in peer-review should be used as a tool to improve work but to also not completely rely on the reviews.

Word count 438

Monday (9/17)

Scholarly books would be a great source for a research project. They are reliable sources that are written by scholars for scholars or those that are interested in learning more about a subject. The only downside of using this type of source is that it takes a long time to get a book released. I knew this before the class but when I was working on our library ethnography project I realized that when coming up with research topics that I need to keep in mind how long it takes before reliable scholarly works to study from are released.  

Popular magazines though are great for gossip, celebrity information, or in my case running or HGTV, they are not really reliable for a research paper. A lot of popular magazines are focused towards certain groups or particular opinions. Popular magazines may be great but probably not the most reliable.

Newspapers are not something that I would use for a research project. Though there are informative, they also give just the basics. Newspapers from what I have learned do go through some form of fact checking in their articles, but not as much as a scholarly work or encyclopedia.

Government documents would be a great source of information for a research project. The example in class was a book about the economy with the year’s information. Government documents would be useful if writing a paper or doing some type of research project. I did some further research on this type of document. I found that Government documents come in the form of books, pamphlets, posters, periodicals, and online databases.

Encyclopedias are another great source of information in doing a research paper or project. They provide accurate information that has gone through fact checking processes over and over again. I did learn in class though that, researchers must be careful to have the latest edition. Even going from one edition to the next, some of the information changes could be drastic.

Scholarly journal articles- Like I mentioned earlier, scholarly works are written by scholars for scholars. The difference being journal articles are usually ten to thirty pages. I find that scholarly journals are easier to get information from because they go into details without having to search through hundreds of pages of information.

Word Count 380

9/12

*Did you change your research question since Monday? How? (Did you narrow it? Make it broader?)

Since Monday I think I finally realized what I wanted my research question to be. I was having issues before because I had so many ideas that I was having a difficult time forming one question. Monday I knew our topic was Xenophobia and how racism was a form of Xenophobia. I wanted to explain how people show their Xenophobia or in our case how they show their racism. Since racism is such a broad concept, I wanted to give a more specific example. So my research topic is to explain how the KKK showed their fear of African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. Though their methods were horrible, showing violence and both physical and psychological intimidation, is a way of dealing with fears of African Americans and their fear of that race taking over during the Civil Right Movement.

From there I broke it down to what forms of intimidation did the KKK use to express their fears towards African Americans during the Civil Right Movement?

I then narrowed it to in what ways did the KKK express their fears towards African Americans giving examples of their actions, words, as well as various forms of physical and psychological intimidation.

I decided to go this direction because it is the opposite view that I have studied before. In other classes I have written papers on the KKK and how they are a hate group. I thought it would be interesting to try to see the KKK’s actions from the view of them being fearful.

Resources for my research will probably be news articles, and psychology journals.

*And I still need to look into this further but I actually saw something on the news the other day about a KKK legal fight going on right now.* The issue is unrelated to the Civil Right Movement but shows that they are still an on-going group.

Word Count 330

09/10/2012

My group’s research topic is over Xenophobia which is the unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers or of that which is strange. From that we want to be more specific or narrower. Instead of all fears or hate we wanted to focus on racism which is a form of xenophobia and the KKK and how they expressed their fears. We chose the Ku Klux Klan who is a group of people who are fearful of African Americans.

So my research question is…

How did or in what ways did the Ku Klux Klan show their xenophobia of African American’s during the Civil Rights Movement?

With a combination of this class and a few of my other Criminology courses I have learned that the Ku Klux Klan and other groups that are hate groups or racists can show their fear of groups or other races in the ways they act. By that I mean though they exhibit hatred in their actions even by means of violence but that they are acting out of fear.

        What specific aspect of my topic do I want to research further?

This may seem odd but I am curious about what exactly the Ku Klux Klan did to people. I know of lynch mobs and the burning of crosses in people’s yards but what else did they do? Were their actions all violent? Were the majority of attacks just strictly to put fear in others? (the mental/psychological effects of fear on people can be just as harmful as physical harm) Or were the acts of the KKK meant to physically harm all African Americans?  

[Word count 270]

9/5/2012

My group chose the topic xenophobia which is the fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange.

From there we kind of narrowed our topic down to a well-known group that is hateful and hated. We decided on discussing the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and their involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. (Well more like the problems that they caused during that time period.)

I was thinking that you had us pull topics from news sources because they would be a reliable source to do a research project from. If we could find a news article on it, it also probably meant that our topics were something that we could realistically do a project on unlike the topics discussed in class like the World War II which would be practically impossible to do a detailed project on.

After doing some presearching I find this topic to be interesting [interesting because the things that the Ku Klux Klan did are so insane that it is hard to believe that it really happened. And that they still exist today!!] My group wants to explain the things that the KKK did and maybe even add in a few cases where the KKK are still causing problems in 2012.  

[Word count 212]