Day 4

18th May 2019

Activities:

1. Today was our first guest lecture. Professor Sitharamam Kakarala teaches Law and Justice at Azim Premji University, and has had a long and illustrious academic career in this field. He began by showing us a video clip of an interview with physicist Richard Feynman, where Feynman was asked to explain why similar magnetic poles repel each other. Feynman said that he could not answer that question in a way the interviewer would understand because without a comprehensive knowledge of the context of the physics behind magnetism, Feynman could not offer a truthful, accurate answer to the interviewer’s question. Using this video, Prof. Ram introduced the concept of a conceptual framework—a theoretical lens through which to look at the world; for example, Feynman’s knowledge of physics is a theoretical lens through which he understands the behavior of magnets.
2. Then, Prof. Ram led a discussion on how to approach creating a conceptual framework to guide our research. We spoke about the importance of questioning underlying assumptions and recognizing the power of interrogating yourself. Prof. Ram conducted a brief presentation on the different dimensions of research, which include: articulating a goal, crafting a conceptual framework, framing research questions, picking research methods, and ensuring the validity of results.
3. After that, each of us were asked to write answers to three questions: what about your project interests you? What are you trying to understand about your subject? What is your conceptual framework?
4. Then, we took turns to explain our answers to the group, and Prof. Ram responded to each of answers, offering other ways to approach our material and recommending books/academic fields worth exploring in our research.
5. After lunch Prof. Ram left, and the rest of us traveled to the Goethe Institut in Indiranagar, where we watched a documentary called “Up, Down & Sideways,” directed by Anushka Meenakshi and Iswar Srikumar. The film followed the lives of rice farmers in the village of Phek, in Nagaland, and explored their relationship to music.

Questions considered:

1. How much should theory influence fiction? How do you represent scholarship, which offers large, generalizable results, in the particular, localized worlds of your work?
2. What is your perspective on your subject matter? What are you trying to explain about this subject? What truth are you trying to convey through this project? How does this inform your conceptual framework?
3. How are you going to balance the theoretical with the emotional core of the project? How will you put them in conversation with one another?