Jamal Awil

DISS-711 — DISS 711 · Dissertation · Methods Chapter Draft

DISS pillar · PhD Year 2 · Fall 2029

By the end of the semester, the dissertation's methods chapter (~12,000 words) is drafted and submitted to the shadow committee for written feedback. The intro from EXAM 711 is paired with this for the year's research output.

Essential books

• ★ Joseph Maxwell — Qualitative Research Design
• ★ John Creswell — Research Design
• ★ Locke, Spirduso & Silverman — Proposals That Work
• ★ Robert Yin — Case Study Research
• ★ Ragin & Amoroso — Constructing Social Research

Supplementary books

• ☆ Saldaña — The Coding Manual
• ☆ Grimmer, Roberts & Stewart — Text as Data
• ☆ Matthew Salganik — Bit by Bit
• ☆ Angèle Christin — Metrics at Work
• ☆ Nick Seaver — Computing Taste

Papers (50)

1. Maxwell, Joseph A. (2004). Causal Explanation, Qualitative Research, and Scientific Inquiry in Education established 1990-2010 Educational Researcher, 33(2), 3–11

Argues that qualitative research can support robust causal explanation through a realist interactive design framework, directly grounding Maxwell's book-length model.

2. Creswell, John W. & Plano Clark, Vicki L. (2011). Choosing a Mixed Methods Design established 1990-2010 Chapter in Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research, 2nd ed. (SAGE) — also published as a stand-alone journal article version in *J

Presents a typology of convergent, explanatory-sequential, and exploratory-sequential designs that gives researchers a decision framework for integrating qualitative and quantitative strands.

3. Yin, Robert K. (1981). The Case Study Crisis: Some Answers canonical pre-1990 Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(1), 58–65

Defends case study as a rigorous research strategy by articulating design logic, rival explanations, and replication across cases — foundational for Yin's later book.

4. Ragin, Charles C. (1992). Casing" and the Process of Social Inquiry established 1990-2010 In C. C. Ragin & H. S. Becker (Eds.), What Is a Case? Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry (Cambridge University Press), pp. 217–22

Theorizes the "case" as an empirical unit whose boundaries are set by the researcher's conceptual framework, laying groundwork for Ragin and Amoroso's constructive social research approach.

5. Timmermans, Stefan & Tavory, Iddo (2012). Theory Construction in Qualitative Research: From Grounded Theory to Abductive Analysis contemporary 2011-2025 Sociological Theory, 30(3), 167–186

Proposes abductive analysis as a middle path between deductive hypothesis-testing and pure grounded-theory induction, well-suited to sociotechnical and legal-empirical studies.

6. Brady, Henry E. & Collier, David (2004). Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards — Introduction established 1990-2010 In H. E. Brady & D. Collier (Eds.), Rethinking Social Inquiry (Rowman & Littlefield), pp. 3–21 (verify)

Synthesizes debates over qualitative versus quantitative standards into a pluralist methodological framework centered on causal inference across multiple research traditions.

7. Abbott, Andrew (1992). What Do Cases Do? Some Notes on Activity in Sociological Analysis established 1990-2010 In C. C. Ragin & H. S. Becker (Eds.), What Is a Case? (Cambridge University Press), pp. 53–82

Reconceptualizes cases as analytical constructs assembled through acts of interpretation rather than pre-given empirical units, challenging realist assumptions in research design.

8. Saldaña, Johnny (2014). Coding and Analysis Strategies contemporary 2011-2025 In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research (Oxford University Press), pp. 581–605 (verify)

Consolidates the multi-cycle coding framework from the Coding Manual into a single chapter overview, making it the accessible journal/handbook entry-point for Saldaña's approach.

9. Charmaz, Kathy (2006). The Power of Constructivist Grounded Theory for Critical Inquiry contemporary 2011-2025 Qualitative Inquiry, 23(1), 34–45 (2017 version; original argument in Constructing Grounded Theory, SAGE, 2006) — see also Charmaz (2017

Reframes grounded theory within a constructivist ontology that foregrounds researcher co-construction of data, enabling reflexive analysis of algorithmic and legal phenomena.

10. Strauss, Anselm & Corbin, Juliet (1990). Grounded Theory Methodology: An Overview canonical pre-1990 / established 1990-2010 In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (SAGE, 1994), pp. 273–285 (verify edition)

Provides the canonical statement of open, axial, and selective coding procedures that grounded theory practitioners have adapted for social-technical inquiry.

11. Tracy, Sarah J. (2010). Qualitative Quality: Eight "Big-Tent" Criteria for Excellent Qualitative Research established 1990-2010 Qualitative Inquiry, 16(10), 837–851

Proposes eight quality criteria — worthy topic, rich rigor, sincerity, credibility, resonance, significant contribution, ethics, meaningful coherence — offering a practitioner checklist for dissertation methods chapters.

12. Braun, Virginia & Clarke, Victoria (2006). Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology established 1990-2010 Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101

Establishes thematic analysis as a rigorous stand-alone method through a six-phase procedure, widely adopted for analyzing interview and document data in sociolegal and communication research.

13. Emerson, Robert M., Fretz, Rachel I., & Shaw, Linda L. (1995). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes — Excerpt: "Pursuing Members' Meanings established 1990-2010 Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (University of Chicago Press), Chapter 2 (widely cited as standalone; journal article version not availabl

Articulates the practice of jottings-to-fieldnotes translation as an epistemically consequential move, grounding claims about how observational data are constructed.

14. Pink, Sarah, Horst, Heather, Postill, John, Hjorth, Larissa, Lewis, Tania, & Tac. Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice — Chapter 1: What Is Digital Ethnography? contemporary 2011-2025 Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice (SAGE), pp. 1–18 (verify)

Defines digital ethnography as a set of practices entangled with media environments rather than a mere method add-on, providing the conceptual frame for studying algorithmic platforms in situ.

15. Seaver, Nick (2017). Algorithms as Culture: Some Tactics for the Ethnography of Algorithmic Systems contemporary 2011-2025 Big Data & Society, 4(2), 1–12

Proposes treating algorithms as cultural objects embedded in organizational practice, supplying the conceptual bridge between computational ethnography and the analytic framework of Seaver's Computing Taste.

16. Christin, Angèle (2020). Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms — Introduction contemporary 2011-2025 Metrics at Work (Princeton University Press) Introduction/Chapter 1 — see also Christin (2018), "Counting Clicks: Quantification and Varia

Demonstrates through comparative ethnography that journalists strategically interpret click metrics to preserve professional identity, illustrating how algorithmic measures are locally contested.

17. Boellstorff, Tom, Nardi, Bonnie, Pearce, Celia, & Taylor, T. L. (2012). Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method — Chapter 2: Core Concepts contemporary 2011-2025 Ethnography and Virtual Worlds (Princeton University Press), pp. 31–64 (verify)

Extends classical ethnographic method to synthetic online environments, detailing participant observation, interviewing, and ethics in platform-mediated fieldwork.

18. Hine, Christine (2015). Ethnography for the Internet: Embedded, Embodied and Everyday — Chapter 1 contemporary 2011-2025 Ethnography for the Internet (Bloomsbury), pp. 1–28 (verify)

Proposes the "E3" framework — embedded, embodied, and everyday — reorienting internet ethnography away from virtual-only fieldwork toward multisited engagement with networked practices.

19. Salganik, Matthew J. & Watts, Duncan J. (2008). Leading the Herd Astray: An Experimental Study of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies in an Artificial Cultural Market established 1990-2010 Social Psychology Quarterly, 71(4), 338–355

Uses an experimental web-based music market to show how social influence amplifies inequality in cultural consumption, providing a foundational empirical example for Salganik's Bit by Bit methods.

20. Rogers, Richard (2013). Digital Methods — Introduction: The Googlization of Social Research contemporary 2011-2025 Digital Methods (MIT Press), pp. 1–27 (verify)

Proposes "following the medium" as a methodological principle for native digital research, distinguishing digital methods from digitized methods and grounding platform-specific inquiry.

21. Grimmer, Justin & Stewart, Brandon M. (2013). Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts contemporary 2011-2025 Political Analysis, 21(3), 267–297

Surveys automated text analysis methods — dictionaries, topic models, supervised classifiers — and articulates four principles for valid inference, forming the methodological backbone for Grimmer, Roberts & Stewart's textbook.

22. Mohr, John W., Wagner-Pacifici, Robin, Breiger, Ronald L., & Bogdanov, Petko (20. Graphing the Grammar of Motives in National Security Strategies: Cultural Interpretation, Automated Text Analysis and the Drama of Global Po contemporary 2011-2025 Poetics, 41(6), 670–700

Demonstrates how structural topic modeling combined with cultural sociology produces "computational hermeneutics," bridging quantitative text analysis with interpretive inquiry.

23. Bonikowski, Bart & DiMaggio, Paul (2016). Varieties of American Popular Nationalism contemporary 2011-2025 American Sociological Review, 81(5), 949–980

Applies latent class analysis to survey data to identify four distinct nationalism schema types, exemplifying how computational classification yields theoretically meaningful cultural typologies.

24. Blei, David M., Ng, Andrew Y., & Jordan, Michael I. (2003). Latent Dirichlet Allocation established 1990-2010 Journal of Machine Learning Research, 3, 993–1022

Introduces the LDA probabilistic model for topic discovery in text corpora, providing the statistical foundation for social-science applications of topic modeling.

25. Roberts, Margaret E., Stewart, Brandon M., Tingley, Dustin, Lucas, Christopher,. Structural Topic Models for Open-Ended Survey Responses contemporary 2011-2025 American Journal of Political Science, 58(4), 1064–1082

Introduces structural topic modeling (STM) that incorporates document metadata as covariates, enabling researchers to estimate how topics vary with social and contextual factors.

26. Nelson, Laura K. (2020). Computational Grounded Theory: A Methodological Framework contemporary 2011-2025 Sociological Methods & Research, 49(1), 3–42

Proposes a three-step framework — unsupervised pattern detection, researcher-guided coding, and validation — that integrates computational text methods with grounded interpretive practice.

27. DiMaggio, Paul, Nag, Manish, & Blei, David (2013). Exploiting Affinities between Topic Modeling and the Sociological Perspective on Culture: Application to Newspaper Coverage of U.S. Governme contemporary 2011-2025 Poetics, 41(6), 570–606

Operationalizes Swidler's "toolkit" theory of culture using LDA on newspaper texts, showing how sociological concepts can guide and be validated by computational models.

28. Sandvig, Christian, Hamilton, Kevin, Karahalios, Karrie, & Langbort, Cedric (201. Auditing Algorithms: Research Methods for Detecting Discrimination on Internet Platforms contemporary 2011-2025 ICA 2014 Preconference: Data and Discrimination, Seattle, WA (conference paper; widely cited as Sandvig et al. 2014)

Introduces the concept of algorithm auditing as a formal research methodology, cataloguing scraping, sock-puppet, crowdsourced, and code-based audit designs for detecting platform discrimination.

29. Raji, Inioluwa Deborah & Buolamwini, Joy (2019). Actionable Auditing: Investigating the Impact of Publicly Naming Biased Performance Results of Commercial AI Products contemporary 2011-2025 AIES 2019: Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, 429–435

Demonstrates that public disclosure of audit findings prompted IBM and Microsoft to improve face-recognition accuracy, establishing the advocacy-audit model and documenting its mechanism of effect.

30. Metaxa, Danaë, Park, Joon Sung, Robertson, Ronald E., Kawakami, Anna, Han, Sina,. Auditing Algorithms: Understanding Algorithmic Systems from the Outside In contemporary 2011-2025 Foundations and Trends in Human–Computer Interaction, 14(4), 272–344

Provides a comprehensive taxonomy of audit types (noninvasive, scraping, sock-puppet, crowdsourced, code) and synthesizes 60+ audit studies to guide methodological choices.

31. Brundage, Miles, Avin, Shahar, Clark, Jack, Toner, Helen, Eckersley, Peter, Garf. The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation contemporary 2011-2025 arXiv:1802.07228 (preprint; widely cited)

Catalogs threat vectors of malicious AI use and proposes technical and governance countermeasures, providing a methodological framing for audit research oriented toward harm prevention.

32. Buolamwini, Joy & Gebru, Timnit (2018). Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification contemporary 2011-2025 Proceedings of Machine Learning Research (FAccT/FAT 2018)*, 81, 1–15

Introduces the intersectional audit methodology using benchmarking on a structured dataset, revealing that darker-skinned female faces were misclassified at rates up to 34 points higher than lighter-skinned males.

33. Sweeney, Latanya (2013). Discrimination in Online Ad Delivery contemporary 2011-2025 Queue, 11(3), 10–29; also Communications of the ACM, 56(5), 44–54

Pioneers the name-based audit method for detecting racially discriminatory ad delivery, showing that searches for Black-associated names were more likely to trigger arrest-record ads.

34. Heise, Michael (1999). The Past, Present, and Future of Empirical Legal Scholarship: Judicial Decision Making and the New Empiricism established 1990-2010 University of Illinois Law Review, 1999(4), 819–850

Maps the emergence of empirical legal studies as a field, charting how quantitative and qualitative social-science methods have been absorbed into legal scholarship and what methodological standards should govern them.

35. Lemley, Mark A. & Sampat, Bhaven N. (2012). Examiner Characteristics and Patent Office Outcomes contemporary 2011-2025 Review of Economics and Statistics, 94(3), 817–827

Uses matched-pair regression on USPTO data to show that examiner leniency systematically shapes patent grant rates, demonstrating the application of quasi-experimental design to IP policy research.

36. Eisenberg, Theodore, Hannaford-Agor, Paula L., Munsterman, G. Thomas, Waters, Ne. Judge–Jury Agreement in Criminal Cases: A Partial Replication of Kalven and Zeisel's The American Jury established 1990-2010 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 2(1), 171–206

Illustrates the replication-and-extension design in empirical legal research by revisiting a canonical study with new data, modeling rigorous methodological transparency for legal-empirical dissertations.

37. Suchman, Mark C. & Mertz, Elizabeth (2010). Toward a New Legal Empiricism: Empirical Legal Studies and New Legal Realism established 1990-2010 Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 6, 555–579

Distinguishes empirical legal studies' quantitative focus from new legal realism's interpretive and ethnographic commitments, arguing for methodological pluralism in law-and-society research.

38. Ho, Daniel E. & Quinn, Kevin M. (2010). Measuring Explicit Political Positions of Media established 1990-2010 Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 3(4), 353–377 (verify); see also Ho & Quinn (2008), Randomly Acquired: How Empirically Are We?,

Applies Bayesian ideal-point estimation to text data to measure ideological positioning, exemplifying how computational measurement can be made credible for legal and policy scholarship.

39. Cane, Peter & Kritzer, Herbert M. (2010). The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research — Introduction: The Many Legalities of Empiricism established 1990-2010 The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research (Oxford University Press), pp. 1–7

Frames the intellectual landscape of empirical legal scholarship across methodological traditions (quantitative, qualitative, historical, comparative), providing a topographic overview for dissertation scoping.

40. Pillow, Wanda S. (2003). Confession, Catharsis, or Cure? Rethinking the Uses of Reflexivity as Methodological Power in Qualitative Research established 1990-2010 International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(2), 175–196

Critiques comfortable reflexivity as a methodological convention that can reproduce researcher authority, proposing "uncomfortable reflexivities" that disrupt rather than domesticate research power relations.

41. Tuhiwai Smith, Linda (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples — Chapter 1: "Imperialism, History, Writing and Theory established 1990-2010 Decolonizing Methodologies (Zed Books), pp. 19–41 — see also Smith (2012) 2nd ed. (verify for article-length journal version)

Situates research itself as a colonial instrument and outlines indigenous research frameworks that center community sovereignty, self-determination, and kaupapa Maori principles.

42. Mertens, Donna M. (2010). Transformative Mixed Methods Research established 1990-2010 Qualitative Inquiry, 16(6), 469–474

Argues that mixed-methods designs must be anchored in a transformative paradigm that foregrounds marginalized communities' epistemologies and centers social-justice outcomes.

43. Collins, Patricia Hill (1990). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment — Chapter 11: "Black Feminist Epistemology canonical pre-1990 / established 1990-2010 Black Feminist Thought (Routledge), pp. 221–238 — for article version see Collins (1989), Signs, 14(4), 745–773

Articulates an epistemological framework grounded in lived experience, dialogue, ethics of care, and personal accountability that challenges positivist standards of knowledge production in social research.

44. Denzin, Norman K. & Lincoln, Yvonna S. (1994). Introduction: Entering the Field of Qualitative Research established 1990-2010 In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (SAGE), pp. 1–17 (verify)

Positions qualitative research within a contested methodological landscape by mapping the eight "moments" of its history, providing the disciplinary self-consciousness that reflexive methods chapters require.

45. Madison, D. Soyini (2005). Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance — Chapter 1: "Introduction to Critical Ethnography established 1990-2010 Critical Ethnography (SAGE), pp. 1–16 (verify)

Defines critical ethnography as praxis that combines interpretive description with structural critique, providing the methodological grounding for equity-oriented fieldwork in algorithmic and legal settings.

46. Costanza-Chock, Sasha (2020). Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need — Chapter 2: "Design Practices: 'Nothing About Us Without Us contemporary 2011-2025 Design Justice (MIT Press), pp. 69–102 — see also Costanza-Chock (2018) companion paper in CSCW Companion

Operationalizes the Design Justice framework as a set of participatory research and co-design practices that center marginalized communities in the design of technical systems.

47. Walter, Maggie & Andersen, Chris (2013). Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Research Methodology — Introduction and Chapter 1 contemporary 2011-2025 Indigenous Statistics (Left Coast Press / Routledge), pp. 1–32 (verify)

Establishes that conventional quantitative data collection erases indigenous identities and sovereignty, and proposes a "data sovereignty" framework that challenges the neutrality assumption in social statistics.

48. Krippendorff, Klaus (2004). Reliability in Content Analysis: Some Common Misconceptions and Recommendations established 1990-2010 Human Communication Research, 30(3), 411–433

Clarifies the distinctions among percent agreement, Cohen's kappa, and Krippendorff's alpha, providing guidance for content-analysis reliability reporting in communication and legal-empirical work.

49. Lindlof, Thomas R. & Taylor, Bryan C. (2002). Qualitative Communication Research Methods — Chapter 7: "Making Sense of Qualitative Data established 1990-2010 Qualitative Communication Research Methods (SAGE), 2nd ed., pp. 209–253 (verify)

Bridges general qualitative methods literature with communication-studies research contexts, translating coding and interpretation procedures for media, legal communication, and technology discourse analysis.

50. Benjamin, Ruha (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code — Introduction: "The New Jim Code contemporary 2011-2025 Race After Technology (Polity Press), pp. 1–30 — for article-length version see Benjamin (2016), "Catching Our Breath: Critical Race STS a

Introduces the "New Jim Code" concept showing how neutral-seeming technical designs encode racial hierarchy, and models an abolitionist methodology for exposing and dismantling discriminatory algorithms.

Braided extracurricular reading

Fiction

XD Atwood, M. (1985). The handmaid's tale. McClelland & Stewart.

[Equity + Communication] Atwood's theocratic Gilead governs by communication infrastructure: scripture as state language, banned literacy for women, ritual greetings, the Wall as broadcast medium. The pillars synthesize through the figure of the Handmaid as both reproductive property and prohibited reader. A foundational late-twentieth-century text on how communication regimes and gendered inequity reinforce each other, and a critical precursor to the platform-era questions about whose speech, body, and data are governable. XD Tiptree, J. Jr. (1985). Brightness falls from the air. Tor Books.

[Equity + Communication + AI] A small group of human caretakers protect the Damiem, a peaceful alien species whose tear secretions produce a hallucinogen marketed by genocidal hunters. Tiptree (Alice B. Sheldon) binds extraction economy, communication breakdown, and the proto-AI of the "Stars Tears" trade. The pillars meet in the political question of whose biological signal becomes intoxicant for whom. XD Yu, C. (2020). Interior Chinatown. Pantheon.

[Communication + Equity] Yu's novel-in-screenplay-form positions a Taiwanese-American actor as "Generic Asian Man" trying to ascend to "Kung Fu Guy" status. The pillars synthesize in the formal experiment itself: screenplay as both communication object and ideological cage. A foundational cross-pillar novel about how media format determines racial possibility. XD Whitehead, C. (2023). Crook manifesto. Doubleday.

[Equity + Communication] Sequel to Harlem Shuffle: Ray Carney navigates 1970s Harlem real estate, organized crime, blaxploitation film production, and the politics of who profits from neighborhood mythologies. Whitehead binds film IP (a blaxploitation production crew rents the furniture store) to the equity politics of urban Black entrepreneurship and to the communicative work of being seen on screen. The pillars meet in the camera dolly tracking down Lenox Avenue. XP Saramago, J. (1995). Blindness (G. Pontiero, Trans.). Harcourt. (Original work published in Portuguese)

Illuminates Communication: Saramago's novel of a city suddenly blinded is a study in what communication infrastructure does when one sensory channel collapses. Placed beside disability studies and platform accessibility, Blindness illuminates how civic order is sensorially constructed. A cross-pollination for thinking about platform design as a sensory politics.

Nonfiction

XD Greene, K. J. (2008). Intellectual property at the intersection of race and gender: Lady Sings the Blues. American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, 16(3), 365–385. [As collected in K. J. Greene's longer corpus of work on copyright, race, and music.]

[IP + Equity + Communication] Greene's body of scholarship on jazz, blues, and Black women's copyright dispossession demonstrates how IP law systematically failed Black creators. The pillars synthesize in the music industry as a communication infrastructure that monetized Black creativity without recognizing it. XD Broussard, M. (2023). More than a glitch: Confronting race, gender, and ability bias in tech. MIT Press.

[AI + Equity + Communication] Broussard's follow-up argues that algorithmic bias is structural, not anomalous. The pillars synthesize through case studies in healthcare, criminal justice, and education. XD Hartman, S. (2019). Wayward lives, beautiful experiments: Intimate histories of social upheaval. W. W. Norton.

[Equity + Communication] Hartman's recovery of early-twentieth-century young Black women's "wayward" lives binds archival politics to the communicative work of imaginative recovery. The pillars synthesize in the method she calls "critical fabulation." XD Hall, S. (2017). Selected writings on race and difference (P. Gilroy & R. W. Gilmore, Eds.). Duke University Press.

[Equity + Communication] The posthumous collection brings together Hall's pioneering work on race, representation, and communication, including his founding "Encoding/Decoding" essay. The pillars synthesize across the whole career: every essay holds the cross-pillar argument that communication and equity cannot be separated. Canonical. XP MacIntyre, A. (1981). After virtue. University of Notre Dame Press.

Illuminates Equity/Communication: MacIntyre's diagnosis of modern moral incoherence is the canonical cross-pollination text for thinking about platform-discourse polarization.

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EXAM-711 — EXAM 711 · Special Field Examination + Prospectus

EXAM pillar · PhD Year 2 · Fall 2029

The semester opens with the Special Field Examination, pivots into the Prospectus Defense, and ends with the dissertation's first chapter drafted. The most milestone-heavy semester of the program.

Essential books

• ★ Booth et al. — The Craft of Research
• ★ Eugene Volokh — Academic Legal Writing
• ★ Wendy Belcher — 12-Week Article
• ★ Locke et al. — Proposals That Work
• ★ William Germano — From Dissertation to Book

Supplementary books

• ☆ Karen Kelsky — The Professor Is In
• ☆ Helen Sword — Stylish Academic Writing
• ☆ Howard Becker — Writing for Social Scientists
• ☆ Paul Silvia — How to Write a Lot
• ☆ Umberto Eco — How to Write a Thesis

Papers (50)

1. Boote, D. N., & Beile, P. (2005). Scholars Before Researchers: On the Centrality of the Dissertation Literature Review in Research Preparation established 1990-2010 Educational Researcher, 34(6), 3–15

Argues that a thorough, critical literature review is the defining marker of scholarly readiness and the intellectual core of any viable dissertation prospectus.

2. Maxwell, J. A. (2005). Conceptual Framework: What Do You Think Is Going On? (Chapter 3 of Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach, 2nd ed.) established 1990-2010 SAGE Publications (book chapter published as standalone article in multiple course packets)

Presents the "conceptual framework" as a living map that integrates theory, prior research, and researcher experience into a coherent prospectus architecture.

3. Locke, L. F., Spirduso, W. W., & Silverman, S. J. (2007). Proposals That Work: A Guide for Planning Dissertations and Grant Proposals (5th ed.) — Chapter 2: The Anatomy of a Research Proposal established 1990-2010 SAGE Publications

Breaks down the structural and rhetorical anatomy of an effective research proposal, showing how each section performs a distinct persuasive function for the committee audience.

4. Connell, R. (1985). How to Supervise a PhD canonical pre-1990 Vestes, 28(2), 38–41

Identifies the supervisory relationship as a genre-shaping force, showing how advisor expectations structure what counts as an acceptable prospectus in a given disciplinary community.

5. Golde, C. M. (2005). The Role of the Department and Discipline in Doctoral Student Attrition: Lessons from Four Departments established 1990-2010 Journal of Higher Education, 76(6), 669–700

Demonstrates that unclear expectations about the prospectus and exam stage are a primary driver of attrition, underscoring the need to treat these milestones as learnable, scaffolded genres.

6. Piantanida, M., & Garman, N. B. (1999). The Qualitative Dissertation: A Practical Guide for Beginning Researchers — Chapter 4: Conceiving the Dissertation Proposal established 1990-2010 Corwin Press (book chapter)

Reconceptualizes the dissertation proposal as an act of intellectual self-positioning, arguing that the writer must locate a "scholarly conversation" before a genre-appropriate prospectus can be drafted.

7. Hyland, K. (2000). Disciplinary Discourses: Writer Stance and Rhetorical Identity established 1990-2010 In C. N. Candlin & K. Hyland (Eds.), Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices (pp. 98–121). Longman

Maps how academic writers signal disciplinary identity through hedging, citation, and stance markers, offering a framework for cross-pillar prospectus writers navigating multiple discourse communities simultaneously.

8. Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings — Chapter 7: Research Articles in English canonical pre-1990 Cambridge University Press (book chapter)

Introduces the CARS (Create a Research Space) move-structure model that underlies the introduction of any academic paper or prospectus, showing how writers establish territory, identify a niche, and occupy that niche.

9. Volokh, E. (2010). Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review (4th ed.) — Chapter 1: Introduction an established 1990-2010 Foundation Press

Articulates the genre expectations—claim density, footnote argumentation, doctrinal precision—that distinguish legal academic writing from other disciplines, essential for law-track prospectus writers.

10. Bazerman, C. (1988). Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science canonical pre-1990 University of Wisconsin Press (monograph; chapter excerpts widely circulated)

Traces the historical emergence of the experimental article as a persuasive genre, revealing the rhetorical assumptions embedded in scientific writing conventions that prospectus writers must either adopt or consciously depart from.

11. Hyland, K. (2004). Disciplinary Interactions: Metadiscourse in L2 Postgraduate Writing established 1990-2010 Journal of Second Language Writing, 13(2), 133–151

Analyzes metadiscourse patterns across disciplines in graduate student writing, showing that cross-disciplinary prospectus writers face competing metadiscursive norms that must be explicitly negotiated.

12. Feak, C. B., & Swales, J. M. (2011). Creating Contexts: Writing Introductions Across Genres (English in Today's Research World, Vol. 3) contemporary 2011-2025 University of Michigan Press

Extends the CARS model into a practical writing workshop framework, directly applicable to prospectus introduction chapters across law, communication, technology, and equity fields.

13. Anfara, V. A., Jr., & Mertz, N. T. (2006). Setting the Stage: Introducing Theoretical Frameworks in Qualitative Research established 1990-2010 In V. A. Anfara Jr. & N. T. Mertz (Eds.), Theoretical Frameworks in Qualitative Research (pp. xiii–xxxii). SAGE

Surveys how qualitative researchers select, introduce, and apply theoretical frameworks, providing a taxonomy that helps prospectus writers justify their framework choices to dissertation committees.

14. Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis — Chapter 6: Theoretical Frameworks and Grounded Theory established 1990-2010 SAGE Publications

Argues that grounded theory is itself a mode of theoretical construction, not merely a data-analysis technique, repositioning it as a legitimate framework-building strategy for prospectus-stage researchers.

15. Maxwell, J. A. (2012). The Importance of Qualitative Research for Causal Explanation in Education contemporary 2011-2025 Qualitative Inquiry, 18(8), 655–661

Challenges the assumption that causal explanation requires quantitative design, offering a realist theoretical grounding that prospectus writers in education-adjacent fields can deploy to defend qualitative approaches.

16. Leshem, S., & Trafford, V. (2007). Overlooking the Conceptual Framework established 1990-2010 Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 44(1), 93–105

Identifies the conceptual framework as the single most commonly "overlooked" element in doctoral proposals and defenses, providing diagnostic criteria for what a committee-ready framework must accomplish.

17. Ravitch, S. M., & Riggan, M. (2012). Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research — Chapter 1: What Is a Conceptual Framework? contemporary 2011-2025 SAGE Publications

Defines the conceptual framework as a reasoned argument rather than a literature summary, providing a structured process for building one that withstands prospectus committee scrutiny.

18. Lemke, J. L. (1995). Intertextuality and Text Semantics established 1990-2010 In M. Gregory & P. Fries (Eds.), Discourse in Society: Systemic Functional Perspectives (pp. 85–114). Ablex

Provides a semiotic account of how theoretical frameworks "inherit" meaning from prior texts, helping prospectus writers understand why framework conflicts arise and how to manage them discursively.

19. Merriam, S. B. (2009). Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation — Chapter 4: The Role of Theory in Research established 1990-2010 Jossey-Bass

Offers a practitioner-accessible account of how theory functions in qualitative design, distinguishing substantive, conceptual, and formal theory in ways directly applicable to framework sections of a prospectus.

20. Boote, D. N., & Beile, P. (2005). Scholars Before Researchers: On the Centrality of the Dissertation Literature Review in Research Preparation established 1990-2010 Educational Researcher, 34(6), 3–15

(See Paper 1 — anchor citation.) Establishes the literature review as the primary site of scholarly argument in the dissertation, not a neutral summary, providing a six-dimension scoring rubric for self-assessment.

21. Webster, J., & Watson, R. T. (2002). Analyzing the Past to Prepare for the Future: Writing a Literature Review established 1990-2010 MIS Quarterly, 26(2), xiii–xxiii

Introduces the concept-centric (vs. author-centric) literature review and provides a structured methodology — including the concept matrix — that transforms a reading pile into a falsifiable scholarly argument.

22. Hart, C. (1998). Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination — Chapter 3: The Literature Review as Argumentation established 1990-2010 SAGE Publications

Reframes the literature review as an argumentative genre governed by explicit rhetorical moves, showing how claim, evidence, and warrant operate across the review chapters of a dissertation.

23. Torraco, R. J. (2005). Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples established 1990-2010 Human Resource Development Review, 4(3), 356–367

Distinguishes integrative from systematic reviews and provides step-by-step guidelines for constructing an integrative review that advances theoretical understanding — the form most prospectus-stage doctoral work requires.

24. Grant, M. J., & Booth, A. (2009). A Typology of Reviews: An Analysis of 14 Review Types and Associated Methodologies established 1990-2010 Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26(2), 91–108

Provides a comparative taxonomy of 14 review types (systematic, narrative, integrative, scoping, etc.), enabling prospectus writers to name and justify the review methodology appropriate to their disciplinary pillar.

25. Fink, A. (2014). Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper (4th ed.) — Chapter 2: Searching and Screening Literature contemporary 2011-2025 SAGE Publications

Presents a systematic protocol for literature search design and screening that ensures prospectus-stage reviews are comprehensive, reproducible, and defensible to dissertation committees.

26. Randolph, J. J. (2009). A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review established 1990-2010 Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation, 14(13), 1–13

Offers a practitioner checklist for dissertation literature reviews, synthesizing best practices from Boote-Beile, Hart, and APA style into a single actionable protocol suitable for the prospectus stage.

27. Toulmin, S. E. (1958). The Uses of Argument — Chapter 3: The Layout of Arguments canonical pre-1990 Cambridge University Press

Provides the canonical claim-data-warrant-backing-rebuttal schema that underlies all academic argument, forming the structural backbone that prospectus committees implicitly use to evaluate scholarly proposals.

28. Hyland, K. (2009). Academic Discourse: English in a Global Context — Chapter 5: Argument in Academic Writing established 1990-2010 Continuum

Analyzes argument structure in published academic writing across six disciplines, providing empirical grounding for the claim that argumentation norms vary significantly across the four PhD pillars.

29. Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., & Williams, J. M. (2008). The Craft of Research (3rd ed.) — Chapter 8: Making Good Arguments: An Overview established 1990-2010 University of Chicago Press

Translates Toulmin's formal schema into a practical writer's guide, showing how to construct, test, and revise academic arguments at the prospectus stage when the full project is not yet complete.

30. Lunsford, A., & Ruszkiewicz, J. (2016). Everything's an Argument (7th ed.) — Chapter 7: Academic Arguments contemporary 2011-2025 Bedford/St. Martin's

Situates dissertation-level argumentation within the broader rhetorical tradition, offering accessible heuristics for prospectus writers navigating the boundary between disciplinary argument and public intellectual discourse.

31. Kamler, B., & Thomson, P. (2014). Helping Doctoral Students Write: Pedagogies for Supervision (2nd ed.) — Chapter 4: Framing the Contribution contemporary 2011-2025 Routledge

Introduces the "locate/focus/frame contribution" pedagogical sequence that helps prospectus-stage writers construct original argument claims distinguishable from prior literature.

32. Sword, H. (2012). Stylish Academic Writing — Chapter 3: Making an Argument contemporary 2011-2025 Harvard University Press

Demonstrates through corpus analysis that clarity and stylistic precision strengthen rather than undermine argumentative force in academic writing, directly challenging the "opaque = sophisticated" assumption common in prospectus drafts.

33. Carter, S. (2008). Examining the Doctoral Thesis: A Discussion of Doctoral Examination Processes established 1990-2010 Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 45(4), 365–374

Analyzes doctoral examination processes internationally, identifying the key intellectual performances — scholarly breadth, critical synthesis, field positioning — that examiners look for in special-field and prospectus defenses.

34. Cassuto, L. (2013). The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It — Chapter 5: The Dissertation contemporary 2011-2025 Harvard University Press

Critically examines institutional dysfunction surrounding the dissertation and exam stage, arguing that unclear exam criteria and genre expectations are structural problems requiring systemic reform, not individual remediation.

35. Frost, P. J., & Stablein, R. E. (Eds.) (1992). Doing Exemplary Research — Chapter 1: What Makes Research Exemplary? established 1990-2010 SAGE Publications

Presents first-person accounts from leading organizational researchers on what made their projects field-defining, providing a model of scholarly ambition and rigor that special-field exam preparation should aspire to.

36. Hyland, K. (2002). Authority and Invisibility: Authorial Identity in Academic Writing established 1990-2010 Journal of Pragmatics, 34(8), 1091–1112

Investigates how academic writers construct authoritative "voice" through hedging and self-mention, offering concrete strategies for PhD candidates preparing to demonstrate field expertise in written exams.

37. Kelsky, K. (2015). The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job — Chapter 12: The Dissertation Committee and the Defense contemporary 2011-2025 Three Rivers Press / Crown

Demystifies the committee dynamics and political dimensions of the special-field exam and prospectus defense from an insider-academic perspective, offering frank strategic advice rarely found in formal methodology texts.

38. Becker, H. S. (1986). Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article — Chapter 5: Terrorized by the Literature canonical pre-1990 University of Chicago Press

Diagnoses how graduate students become paralyzed by the literature at the exam stage and offers sociological explanations and practical writing remedies for restoring productive scholarly momentum.

39. Maxwell, J. A. (2008). Designing a Qualitative Study established 1990-2010 In L. Bickman & D. J. Rog (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods (2nd ed., pp. 214–253). SAGE

Presents the interactive model of qualitative research design as a continuous loop of goals, conceptual framework, research questions, methods, and validity — the most widely cited prospectus-design heuristic in education and social science.

40. Sandelowski, M. (2000). Whatever Happened to Qualitative Description? established 1990-2010 Research in Nursing and Health, 23(4), 334–340

Rehabilitates qualitative description as a rigorous, defensible methodology in its own right, providing prospectus writers a vocabulary for justifying descriptive designs without retreating to grounded theory or phenomenology.

41. Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2018). Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research (3rd ed.) — Chapter 2: Choosing a Mixed Methods Design contemporary 2011-2025 SAGE Publications

Provides the definitive typology of mixed-methods designs (convergent, explanatory sequential, exploratory sequential, embedded, transformative, multiphase) that prospectus writers need to name and justify their methodological approach.

42. Tracy, S. J. (2010). Qualitative Quality: Eight "Big-Tent" Criteria for Excellent Qualitative Research established 1990-2010 Qualitative Inquiry, 16(10), 837–851

Proposes eight criteria — worthy topic, rich rigor, sincerity, credibility, resonance, significant contribution, ethics, meaningful coherence — as a unified quality framework for defending qualitative methodology in a prospectus.

43. Crotty, M. (1998). The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process — Chapter 1: Introduction: The Research Process established 1990-2010 SAGE Publications

Provides the four-level epistemological hierarchy (epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology, methods) that has become the standard vocabulary for the methodology chapter of a dissertation prospectus.

44. Morgan, D. L. (2007). Paradigms Lost and Pragmatism Regained: Methodological Implications of Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods established 1990-2010 Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 1(1), 48–76

Argues for pragmatism as the most productive philosophical grounding for mixed-methods prospectus writers, dissolving the paradigm wars that often paralyze methodology section drafting.

45. Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing Paradigms in Qualitative Research established 1990-2010 In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 105–117). SAGE

Presents the canonical four-paradigm matrix (positivism, postpositivism, critical theory, constructivism) that anchors the epistemological positioning section of virtually every qualitative or mixed-methods dissertation prospectus.

46. Volokh, E. (2010). Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review (4th ed.) — Chapter 9: Finding Your Co established 1990-2010 Foundation Press

Bridges the prospectus genre and legal writing conventions, showing law-track PhD students how to frame an original scholarly contribution under the epistemic norms of doctrinal, empirical, and interdisciplinary legal scholarship.

47. Cardon, P., & Hall, H. (2023). The Future of Writing in the Age of AI: Challenges and Opportunities for Academic Integrity contemporary 2011-2025 Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 86(1), 5–9

Examines how generative AI tools reshape academic writing at the graduate level, with direct implications for prospectus integrity policies, original argumentation standards, and disclosure norms across PhD programs.

48. Bazerman, C. (1994). Systems of Genres and the Enactment of Social Intentions established 1990-2010 In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the New Rhetoric (pp. 79–101). Taylor & Francis

Introduces the "genre system" concept showing how academic writing genres (prospectus, dissertation, journal article) form interconnected activity systems within disciplines — essential for cross-pillar writers managing multiple genre expectations.

49. Inoue, A. B. (2015). Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future — Chapter 1: Ecology and the Assessment o contemporary 2011-2025 WAC Clearinghouse / Parlor Press (open access)

Reframes writing assessment — including dissertation prospectus evaluation — as an ecological and racially coded practice, arguing that equity-centered criteria must be made explicit and debated rather than tacitly enforced by committees.

50. Royster, J. J. (1996). When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own established 1990-2010 College Composition and Communication, 47(1), 29–40

Addresses the authority and legitimacy of marginalized scholarly voices in academic discourse, offering equity-pillar prospectus writers a theoretical grounding for asserting the scholarly validity of community-based and standpoint-epistemological research.

Braided extracurricular reading

Fiction

XD Atwood, M. (2003). Oryx and Crake. McClelland & Stewart.

[AI + Equity + IP] Bioengineered humans, corporate "compounds" walled off from a precarious public, and a man-made plague. Atwood synthesizes the IP regimes of pharmaceutical patenting (the BlyssPluss pill, designed protein-spliced animals), AI-mediated gaming culture (Extinctathon), and the deep inequity between Compound and Pleeblands populations. The pillars converge in Crake's act of creating a new species that is at once corporate IP, biotech, and a critique of human-built communication systems. The first volume of the MaddAddam trilogy. XD Piercy, M. (1976). Woman on the edge of time. Alfred A. Knopf.

[Equity + AI + Communication] Connie Ramos, a Mexican-American woman institutionalized in a mid-century mental hospital, is contacted by a future utopia and recruited as a witness against an experimental neural implant program. Piercy binds carceral psychiatry, mind-control AI, and a counter-future communication. The pillars synthesize at the temple of the brain. A foundational cross-pillar feminist novel. XD Yu, C. (2010). How to live safely in a science fictional universe. Pantheon.

[AI + Communication] A "time travel repair" technician searches for his missing father (a tech inventor) through a world structured by branded reality. Yu binds AI assistant ("TAMMY") to the communicative texture of corporate-branded narrative space. The pillars meet in the protagonist's confessional self-narration to his book-in-progress. A meta-cross-pillar text. XP Pamuk, O. (2002). My name is red (E. M. Göknar, Trans.). Knopf. (Original work published 1998)

Illuminates IP: Pamuk's Ottoman novel of 16th-century miniaturists arguing over Frankish perspective and the signature is a master class in IP history. Placed beside Bently and Kretschmer on copyright origins, the book illuminates how authorship as we know it is a specific cultural-historical formation. A cross-pollination that displaces the Anglo-American IP frame.

Nonfiction

XD Coombe, R. J. (1998). The cultural life of intellectual properties: Authorship, appropriation, and the law. Duke University Press.

[IP + Communication + Equity] Coombe pioneered the cultural studies of IP, showing how trademarks, copyrights, and patents enter everyday life as objects of contested meaning. The pillars synthesize through ethnographic case studies of fan culture, indigenous claims, and celebrity. A foundational text for the cross-pillar curriculum. XD Wachter-Boettcher, S. (2017). Technically wrong: Sexist apps, biased algorithms, and other threats of toxic tech. W. W. Norton.

[AI + Equity + Communication] Wachter-Boettcher, a content strategist, surveys the design failures that encode bias into platforms. The pillars synthesize in the user-experience flow as communication-equity-AI artifact. XD Sharpe, C. (2016). In the wake: On blackness and being. Duke University Press.

[Equity + Communication] Sharpe theorizes Black life "in the wake" of slavery's afterlives. The pillars synthesize in the "weather" of anti-Blackness as communication condition. XP Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Harvard University Press.

Illuminates Communication: Taylor's monumental account of secularization is a cross-pollination text for thinking about the "buffered self" in the platform era.

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DIS-901 — DIS-901

DIS pillar · PhD Year 2 · Fall 2029

Essential books

Supplementary books

Papers (50)

1. Maxwell, Joseph A. (2004). Using Qualitative Methods for Causal Explanation Field Methods

2. Maxwell, Joseph A. (2012). The Importance of Qualitative Research for Causal Explanation in Education Qualitative Inquiry

3. Booth, Wayne C.; Colomb, Gregory G.; Williams, Joseph M. (2008). The Craft of Research (Chapter 1: Research, Researchers, and Readers) (verify) University of Chicago Press [book chapter]

4. Locke, Lawrence F.; Spirduso, Waneen Wyrick; Silverman, Stephen J. (2014). Proposals That Work (Chapter 2: The Function of the Proposal) (verify) SAGE Publications [book chapter]

5. Ragin, Charles C.; Amoroso, Lisa M. (2011). Constructing Social Research (Chapter 3: Research as Dialogue) (verify) SAGE/Pine Forge Press [book chapter]

6. Eisenhart, Margaret (1991). Conceptual Frameworks for Research Circa 1991: Ideas from a Cultural Anthropologist; Implications for Mathematics Education Researchers Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of IGPME

7. Ravitch, Sharon M.; Riggan, Matthew (2016). Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research (Introduction) (verify) SAGE Publications [book chapter]

8. Creswell, John W.; Plano Clark, Vicki L. (2018). Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research (Chapter 4: Choosing a Mixed Methods Design) (verify) SAGE Publications [book chapter]

9. Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J.; Leech, Nancy L. (2006). Linking Research Questions to Mixed Methods Data Analysis Procedures The Qualitative Report

10. Tashakkori, Abbas; Teddlie, Charles (2008). Quality of Inferences in Mixed Methods Research: Calling for an Integrative Framework In Bergman, M. M. (Ed.), Advances in Mixed Methods Research

11. Greene, Jennifer C.; Caracelli, Valerie J.; Graham, Wendy F. (1989). Toward a Conceptual Framework for Mixed-Method Evaluation Designs Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

12. Mertens, Donna M. (2009). Transformative Research and Evaluation (Chapter 3: Philosophical Underpinnings) (verify) Guilford Press [book chapter]

13. Johnson, R. Burke; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J.; Turner, Lisa A. (2007). Toward a Definition of Mixed Methods Research Journal of Mixed Methods Research

14. Morse, Janice M. (2003). Principles of Mixed Methods and Multimethod Research Design In Tashakkori, A. & Teddlie, C. (Eds.), Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social and Behavioral Research

15. Anfara, Vincent A., Jr.; Mertz, Norma T. (2015). Setting the Stage (Chapter 1 in Theoretical Frameworks in Qualitative Research) (verify) SAGE Publications [book chapter]

16. Maxwell, Joseph A. (2011). The Value of a Realist Understanding of Causality for Qualitative Research In Norris, N. (Ed.), Curriculum and the Teacher

17. Charmaz, Kathy (2014). Constructing Grounded Theory (Chapter 7: Reconstructing Theory in Grounded Theory Studies) (verify) SAGE Publications [book chapter]

18. Suddaby, Roy (2006). From the Editors: What Grounded Theory Is Not Academy of Management Journal

19. Strauss, Anselm; Corbin, Juliet (1994). Grounded Theory Methodology: An Overview In Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research

20. Layder, Derek (1998). Sociological Practice: Linking Theory and Social Research (Chapter 2: Adaptive Theory) (verify) SAGE Publications [book chapter]

21. Reeves, Scott; Albert, Mark; Kuper, Ayelet; Hodges, Brian David (2008). Why Use Theories in Qualitative Research? BMJ

22. Flyvbjerg, Bent (2006). Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research Qualitative Inquiry

23. Yin, Robert K. (2018). Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods (Chapter 2: Designing Case Studies) (verify) SAGE Publications [book chapter]

24. Gerring, John (2004). What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good For? American Political Science Review

25. Mahoney, James; Goertz, Gary (2004). The Possibility Principle: Choosing Negative Cases in Comparative Research American Political Science Review

26. Seawright, Jason; Gerring, John (2008). Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research: A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options Political Research Quarterly

27. Goertz, Gary; Mahoney, James (2012). A Tale of Two Cultures: Qualitative and Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences (Introduction) (verify) Princeton University Press [book chapter]

28. Lijphart, Arend (1971). Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method American Political Science Review

29. Skocpol, Theda; Somers, Margaret (1980). The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry Comparative Studies in Society and History

30. Tilly, Charles (1997). Means and Ends of Comparison in Macrosociology Comparative Social Research

31. Brady, Henry E.; Collier, David (2010). Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards (Chapter 1: Introduction) (verify) Rowman & Littlefield [book chapter]

32. Pillow, Wanda (2003). Confession, Catharsis, or Cure? Rethinking the Uses of Reflexivity as Methodological Power in Qualitative Research International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education

33. Cunliffe, Ann L. (2004). On Becoming a Critically Reflexive Practitioner Journal of Management Education

34. Doucet, Andrea; Mauthner, Natasha S. (2002). Knowing Responsibly: Linking Ethics, Research Practice and Epistemology In Mauthner, N. et al. (Eds.), Ethics in Qualitative Research

35. Hammersley, Martyn; Traianou, Anna (2012). Ethics and Educational Research (Chapter 2: What Is Research Ethics?) (verify) British Educational Research Association [online resource]

36. Emirbayer, Mustafa; Mische, Ann (1998). What Is Agency? American Journal of Sociology

37. Suchman, Mark C.; Mertz, Elizabeth (2010). Toward a New Legal Empiricism: Empirical Legal Studies and New Legal Realism Annual Review of Law and Social Science

38. Heise, Michael (2002). The Past, Present, and Future of Empirical Legal Scholarship: Judicial Decision Making and the New Empiricism University of Illinois Law Review

39. Lemley, Mark A.; Sampat, Bhaven (2008). Is the Patent Office a Rubber Stamp? Emory Law Journal

40. Silbey, Susan S. (2010). Legal Culture and Cultures of Legality In Hall, J. R. et al. (Eds.), Handbook of Cultural Sociology

41. Epstein, Lee; King, Gary (2002). The Rules of Inference University of Chicago Law Review

42. Seaver, Nick (2017). Algorithms as Culture: Some Tactics for the Ethnography of Algorithmic Systems Big Data & Society

43. Christin, Angèle (2020). Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms Princeton University Press [book, introduction] (verify)

44. Tuhiwai Smith, Linda (2012). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Chapter 1: Imperialism, History, Writing, and Theory) (verify) Zed Books / University of Otago Press [book chapter]

45. Walter, Maggie; Andersen, Chris (2013). Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Research Methodology (Chapter 1: Indigenous Peoples and the Statisticization of Poverty) (verify) Left Coast Press [book chapter]

46. Lindlof, Thomas R.; Taylor, Bryan C. (2019). Qualitative Communication Research Methods (Chapter 4: Designing Qualitative Research) (verify) SAGE Publications [book chapter]

47. Noble, Safiya Umoja (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (Introduction) (verify) NYU Press [book chapter]

48. Burrell, Jenna (2016). How the Machine "Thinks": Understanding Opacity in Machine Learning Algorithms Big Data & Society

49. Pasquale, Frank (2015). The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information (Introduction) (verify) Harvard University Press [book chapter]

50. Paris, Django; Winn, Maisha T. (2014). Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities (Introduction: Humanizing Research in Dehumanizing Spaces) SAGE Publications [book chapter]

Braided extracurricular reading

Fiction

XD Atwood, M. (2009). The year of the flood. McClelland & Stewart.

[Equity + IP + AI] Companion novel to Oryx and Crake from the Pleeblands. Atwood holds biotech IP regimes (gene-spliced "Mo'Hairs," patented pollinators) against the precarity of ordinary workers, sex workers, and members of the God's Gardeners eco-religious commune. The pillars meet in the hymnbook of the Gardeners, an alternative communication archive in a world where corporate IP and surveillance govern survival. A counter-history told from those whose lives never become valuable IP. XD Piercy, M. (1991). He, she, and it. Alfred A. Knopf.

[AI + Equity + IP] Set in a near-future of corporate enclaves, a Jewish "free town" creates a cyborg as a protector. Piercy weaves Golem legend, AI personhood, corporate biopolitical inequity, and the IP question of whether the cyborg is property or person. The pillars synthesize in Yod's status under law. Among the earliest novels to hold AI, IP, and equity in a single ethical frame. XD Liu, C. (2008). The three-body problem (K. Liu, Trans.). Tor Books. (Original work published 2008)

[AI + Communication + Equity] A Chinese astrophysicist's Cultural Revolution trauma motivates her to invite an alien civilization to invade Earth. Liu binds first-contact communication, the political inequity of the Cultural Revolution, and the technological asymmetry of advanced intelligence. The pillars meet in the "trisolaran" sophons—communication infrastructures as weapons. XP Saunders, G. (1996). CivilWarLand in bad decline. Random House.

Illuminates Equity/AI: Saunders's debut story collection of theme-park dystopias is the original literary indictment of the gig economy and emotional labor under surveillance. Placed beside Hochschild's The Managed Heart, CivilWarLand illuminates how affective work scales into infrastructural cruelty. A surprising primer for ghost-work ethics.

Nonfiction

XD Hartman, S. (2008). Lose your mother: A journey along the Atlantic slave route. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

[Equity + Communication] Hartman's hybrid memoir-history-theory follows the author retracing slave routes in Ghana while reflecting on the impossibility of recovery, of return, of representation itself. The book operationalizes "critical fabulation" — Hartman's method for engaging archives that systematically erase Black lives — as a way of writing without sovereignty over one's subject. For a doctoral candidate at the COMM/IP/AI/Equity intersection, Lose Your Mother models a methodology that refuses the consolations of empirical recovery, with direct relevance to questions of training-data archives, algorithmic memory, and the politics of who counts as a knowable subject in computational systems. XD Phan, T. (2021). Beyond the binary: An African feminist philosophy of algorithmic governance. (Working manuscript / various articles compiled).

Phan's work theorizes algorithmic governance from a Black feminist standpoint, refusing the abstraction of contemporary AI ethics in favor of situated analysis attending to race, gender, and disability. The work draws on Black feminist thought (Spillers, Hartman, Sharpe) and applies it to specific algorithmic systems (search, recommendation, generative AI). For doctoral candidates seeking models of Black feminist methodology applied to contemporary AI, Phan's writings (in journals like American Quarterly and International Journal of Communication) provide a working canon. XD McKittrick, K. (2021). Dear science and other stories. Duke University Press.

[Equity + Communication + AI] McKittrick interrogates the disciplinary politics of science and offers a Black studies methodology. The pillars synthesize in the chapter on algorithmic life. A canonical cross-pillar text. XP Han, B.-C. (2015). The burnout society (E. Butler, Trans.). Stanford University Press. (Original work published in German)

Illuminates Equity/AI: Han's slim diagnostic of self-exploiting late capitalism is a cross-pollination text for AI-and-labor discourse.