Being able to understand and critically examine the world around us is one of the most important skills that one should take away from a baccalaureate program. Being able to conduct strong research requires you to not only be able to find sources but analyze them for quality and relevance. When that research is interdisciplinary, you must also understand how the issue you are researching intersects with other fields. As a student in an interdisciplinary program, I was taught not only to examine the world around me through the lens of my field, but to see it as it relates to other fields. Two examples of this are the Reproductive Care Policy Analysis and Blackness and the MeToo Era.
For the final in the course BISLEP 302: Policy Analysis, all students were instructed to identify a policy issue that mattered to them and conduct a policy analysis relating to that issue. To conduct a thorough analysis about the state of policy surrounding reproductive care in the United States (the topic I chose), I had to look at reproductive care through many lenses. Looking at reproductive care from the medical lens provided insight into what types of care exist and should be considered as well as what obstacles to comprehensive reproductive care existed. Looking at reproductive care from a social lens provided insight into who was most impacted by policy around reproductive care and how decisions about policy care would impact the most marginalized people in our communnity. Looking at reproductive care from an economic lens allowed me to understand which political actors had the resources to pass their legislation and how money influences politics. Examining this issue through an interdisciplinary lens allowed me to understand how different factors influence policy and the real life impacts of policy decisions.
My second artifact, Blackness and the MeToo Era, completed as a part of the course BIS 340: Approaches to cultural research, looked at how Black women were impacted by the MeToo era and the historical precedent of the race-based sexual discrimination that they faced. Using a combination of research methods, I analyzed the cultural space in which Black women occupied throughout history, analyzing a combination of historical documents. While this assignment was less interdisciplinary, it demonstrated an ability to do complex research. This assignment required me to dig through archive and analyze texts. Through this assignment, I developed skills that allowed me to effectively parse through large amounts of data, analyze the relevance of different artifacts to the research that I was conducting, and determine the quality of data that I found. This assignment also allowed me to examine how different subjects such as ethnic studies and womens studies intersected to further marginalize Black women during a movement they founded.
These two research opportunities, along with others, such as my research on 107 Days and my work as a researcher with the UWB Labor Colloquium have not only taught me how to conduct in-depth research, but also gain a deeper understanding of the importance of using an interdisciplinary lens when conducting research. Without looking at the world throuh an interdisciplary lens, we are unable to see the whole issue and end up reaching conclusions that fail to solve the problems they are trying to address.
Leiney Gamache 