Paper Topic Ideas

From Hobby to Research Question

One of the greats: Anni Albers at her loom in 1937. Image source: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/anni-albers-tate-modern

An admission: choosing a topic when you could write about anything is really hard. I’ve been avoiding working on this post that I happily agreed to write a few months ago because each time I think of a topic, I talk myself out of it. I work with a lot of PCC students at this stage, and when it isn’t MY task, it seems so exciting to choose a topic. Students, I have new empathy for you!
Choosing a topic is hard: Rejected ideas

A few ideas that were abandoned along the way: 

• Eating enough protein: I’m constantly bombarded on social media about protein, but ugh do I really want to research this? If I find a “right answer” for myself then I might have to actually do it?! 
• I’m very interested in human ceremony and ritual, especially outside of a religious context, but it feels way too big for this post. 
• I think a lot about the idea of focus and attention: mine, my kids, our shared attention in general, but I’m not sure how to make a research blog post about it that isn’t super boring or replicating this excellent book. 
• Menopause WTF: my colleague Rachel beat me to it in this post. 
• Are my kids going to be ok? Are all the kids going to be ok? How to channel existential panic into a blog post? Hmmm.

That mini-brain dump gives you a sense of the churn of this (tired) human brain. As librarians, we often talk to students in the early work of finding a topic. One strategy is to look at your hobbies to find something you actually have an interest in, as well as a bit of working knowledge about, which can make research a little bit easier. Since my ideas have been all over the place and nothing is sticking, I’ll try this myself. This strategy is also welcome because it steers clear of current events and hopefully gets me closer to something I have genuine curiosity about. 

Can something you do for fun become your topic?

I spend a lot of time making things with my hands. I like to cook, I paint badly but enthusiastically, but mostly I’m a fiber arts dork: I knit, weave, sew clothes and quilts, and also dye fabric. I do a lot of thinking and reading about these crafts, as well as trying to learn and continue to grow in each of them. 

Knitting, weaving, and sewing are very applied crafts, and the main tools are my hands and simple/old fashioned implements and materials to create useful, wearable, or decorative stuff. Not exactly a research topic yet, so I’m going to do a little brainstorm about different ways to look at craft:

1. Why are knitting/weaving/sewing considered to be craft and not art? What makes something craft, and is it less valuable than art? Certainly the marketplace and what tends to be in a museum seems that way. 
2. What will happen with craft in the future as AI grows in importance: might craft be elevated?
3. Gender and craft: craft seems pretty female gendered on the surface and in marketing, but there are lots of different types of people who engage in craft. What are their experiences and stories with equity in the wider world of craft marketing and making a living? 
4. Environmental concerns and craft: are there issues with the dyes or other industrial processes to make yarn, fabric, etc? How to consider the carbon footprint of craft supplies? 
5. Big question about beauty and the value humans have always placed on making everyday objects beautiful: ancient pottery, decorative objects through history, even cave paintings!  
6. What happened to home ec where kids built some skill in craft (especially sewing)? Could it return to public schools?

Ok, now I’m getting somewhere: all of these questions feel researchable. They all go in different directions, and would require different kinds of sources, which is often a tricky part of research. I’ll use the second half of this post to look at a few of these possible topics and break down my initial thoughts on where to start researching. I know that seems boring, but seeing the process might help if you’re stuck behind the common “ok…now what” research roadblock.

Finding sources: “Who cares?”

I often use the question “who cares?” when I start to tackle a research question. It sounds flippant, but I mean it more sincerely: who cares about this issue? This helps think about who might have opinions and expertise worth finding. The next question is a practical one: where do they share their thinking? This helps define what kind of sources might be available, and also helps me consider what types of tools I might use to find them (google, library databases, books, etc.).

Below, I’ll use two of the examples above (#2 and #6) to illustrate what this process might look like. This is just my process with these questions--another researcher could take the same question and wind up in an entirely different place. That’s great, expected, and what gives research a personal touch.

What will happen with craft in the future as AI grows in importance: might craft be elevated?

This question is a little tricky as research, as it is primarily about the unknown future: will craft become really expensive, and only for the luxury market, or will there be a wider appetite for handmade goods? I’d probably need to talk a little about the recent trends in handcrafted items, maybe talk about the rise of Etsy, and identify a few prominent figures or trends in this area. My research will likely need to cover a fair bit of territory: popular sources like magazines and blogs, as well as more academic sources.

Here are my thoughts on “who cares about this topic” and “where do they share their thinking?” I also added notes about which tools would be the best fit to find sources.

• People who make things by hand
• Artist statements and websites, interviews, talks, craft guilds and clubs 
• Maybe hard to find: need to identify prominent or local figures 
• Primary tools: web searching, social media, maybe YouTube 
• Writers who think about and shape culture and ideas: mostly journalism
• Magazines, newspapers, websites, blogs 
• Easier to find, use library databases to avoid paywalls 
• Small business owners, Etsy sellers, interior designers 
• Potentially news articles or web searches
• Interviews could be helpful
• This one seems really challenging & time consuming. Local design blogs or lifestyle magazines (Portland Monthly, Sunset?) maybe helpful. 
• Social media and YouTube? 
• Researchers who study human behavior, morality, philosophy, and craft 
• Academic journals, blogs, websites
  • Use library databases, Google Scholar, and site search (example: handmade items and ai site:edu)

That seems like a reasonable start to research for this topic. Having written those out, I feel less interested in the perspectives of small business owners etc at the moment, so I guess that means my interest in this question is less practical and more philosophical. I love crossing things off lists, so that is a helpful realization and narrows my scope a little. I definitely think this is researchable, but I’d need to continue to shape the question into something manageable so it didn’t feel overwhelming.

Having done this work, I'd stop if I weren't certain this was the topic I wanted. Next, I'll repeat that process with another example from my list of questions.

What happened to home ec where kids built some skill in craft (especially sewing)? Could it return to public schools?

Students in home ec class in 1943. Love that sign on the wall! Image source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/books/review/secret-history-of-home-economics-danielle-dreilinger.html

This question is historical because it includes the history of home economics classes, but it also necessitates a survey of the current state of home ec in American public schools, as well as speculation about the future. If I were writing about this, that actually makes a nice outline for an essay, and I’d need to make some decisions about where to focus and what to give less space to.

Here are my thoughts on “who cares about this topic” and “where do they share their thinking?” I also added notes about which tools would be the best fit to find sources.

• Teachers
• Blogs, professional teacher magazines from professional associations/teachers unions 
• Web searching, professional association websites
• Library databases that have good education coverage (ERIC and Professional Development Collection). 
• Professors in education and related departments
• Academic journals, blogs, and websites
• Library databases that have good education coverage (ERIC and Professional Development Collection). 
• Google Scholar 
• Historians who study craft and public education
• Academic journals and books 
• JSTOR and general library databases, Google Scholar, PCC Library catalog for books
• Culture commentators
• Magazine and newspaper articles, blog posts
• Web searching
• Library databases to avoid paywalls 
• Families, parents, and kids currently in school 
• Blogs? interviews? Personal stories? 
• Web searching, personal experience/connections

A decent start, and clearly this topic is pretty sprawling. When a topic covers multiple different academic areas, using Google Scholar with PCC resources linked is a good place to search rather than visiting multiple different library databases to cover education, history, and general content. 

I do feel like this example is probably an easier research task than the question about AI because there is more history and context to draw from. If I had to choose, and also had a tight deadline, this one about home ec classes would be what I’d work on.

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I hope those examples give you a peek into one way to tackle turning a hobby into academic research. It is messy and iterative: but that is part of the fun work. Thanks for reading!