This week, the Sky Team was able to meet and discuss the research project, which was very much needed! It turns out that others in the team were feeling the same way I was in regards to communication- or lack thereof. To make amends and move forward, we had a talk as a team about increasing communication within the group so that we can make greater strides for the project. So far, I have noticed a little more communication, so our discussion was successful in that aspect. Besides fixing the communication breakdown, I think at this point, our team is a little overwhelmed with how to best narrow down the research topic. Although everyone is heroically moving forward and doing the best they can with research this weekend, I do notice that there is still a nebulous feeling about our topic. I think that is because our topic is very much centered on ideas and concepts that were created in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, such as gender identity. I fear that it will be much more difficult to find the historical research that we need.
Thankfully, we will be meeting this week with the professors of the course to get help finding a specific area of interest that will be conducive to the scope of the project. Furthermore, to ease stress and make sure we stick to deadlines, we have agreed as a team to have the bulk of the research done by the end of next week so we can begin the story mapping process and collecting “artifacts” (pictures, documents, videos, etc.) that will supplement the overall narrative and research of our topic.
Besides working with our teams, everyone in the class has been busy completing the first map test, along with other readings and quizzes. I am very grateful that we were given an extension on the map test (which was supposed to have been due this past week). I would not have been able to finish all of the other work for the course on top of the map test and my work outside of Guilford! I think that this course got off on a little bit of a rocky start because the class was not ready to go from zero to seventy-five on the first day, but I do feel that the class is starting to find a rhythm.
Category Archives: Team Sky
All of the blog posts for the Team Sky research project.
Reflection 2-Sky
Today I used JSTOR to search for some articles about my topic, which is healthcare for Uyghur women. While the sources I was able to find are a good start, I’m still hoping for more information. I also used a regular google search for some less scholarly articles. One continuity I noticed was the tension and differences in lifestyle between the Han and the Uyghur community, and I wonder if this is a continuity for the rest of my group members’ topics.
JSTOR was overall easy to use and understand, but I kept running into the problem of my topics only corresponding to one of the keywords. It felt like there were a lot of articles about the Uyghur people and a lot of articles about women’s healthcare, but not as much overlap. More information may be found on another search engine, so I may try that to find more information. Another problem I faced was that many of the articles didn’t focus on healthcare for women; they instead covered general issues facing all genders. They were informative, but just felt like good entry-level articles about the topic: hopefully there will be more direct information about women’s health later on.
One other difficulty I had was finding historical information about women’s healthcare. I could find a lot of articles about issues from current years in the community, dealing with topics such as the discrimination the Uyghur people face due to their ethnicity, a lack of knowledge about illnesses like cervical cancer, and how Uyghur women were affected by China’s one-child policy. But I haven’t been able to find any information about women’s health in earlier times, which is a bit confusing to me. I would assume that health has always been an issue to be dealt with, and women have always needed unique care when it comes to issues such as childbirth. I’m hoping that not finding a lot of information about this topic is due more to not using the right keywords when searching or some other technical issue, rather than an actual lack of sources. However, if I am able to find out more about historical issues of women’s health, I think I could pull together an interesting narrative of historical versus current events, analyzing what has changed and what has stayed the same over the years. However, this narrative also depends on what my teammates find: if no one else is able to find a cohesive narrative between past and present, than I am open and flexible to different ways to develop my topic. Despite a lack of information about women’s health specifically, I was able to find a little bit of general information about the role and perception of women in the Uyghur culture, so I have shared these sources with my group members in the hopes that it may help them with their topics.
While I was a little disappointed with the information I have found so far, I’m hoping I will be able to find more sources by digging a little deeper. I probably have to stop relying on the Internet so much for information and check out some books from the library or something like that.
Sky's the Limit
Lets discuss methodology. We all have a certain way of doing things. As for me, when it comes to doing research projects and presentations, I tend to work backwards. By that I mean, typically I visualize the final result of the project first, then build on the ideas in my head. With the digital silk road project, I’ve already completed the project in my head, but the fundamentals are not coming together. For my group, pinpointing a location to research is much harder than we expected. Determining which era to closely examine is even harder. I did not foresee these challenges. Our group has considered researching groups of people near the Arabian Sea. Presently this land is designated to Iran, Saudi Arabia and parts of Afghanistan . The scope of the Silk Road is so broad that one can find his or herself overwhelmed by the various societies, cultures, religions and so forth. Gathering information is vital for Team Sky at this point. My method for gathering information consists of scouring through academic sources (print books, eBooks, journal articles etc.) related to beauty and body images for Muslim women. I started with Guilford’s library database. I searched for topics related to beauty and body images for Muslim women in addition to the perception of beauty in Islam. I searched for a variety subjects like: “Islamic feminism”, ” beauty in Arabia”, and the “history of women’s bodies” just to get a feel for what kind of information was out there. Now, even though there were plenty of sources for my topic, again I found the task I narrowing the subject down to a specific group of Muslim women very challenging. I read a few summaries that were interesting and I kept record of the ones relevant to my topic. Right now, I am in the beginning stages of exploring Persian art and literature. My intention is to make connections between the idea of beauty in Islam, specifically in locations near the Arabian Sea, and the influence the Silk Road had on those perceptions of beauty. The articles I have read are very engaging. In addition to the books and articles, art that is associated with the women and Islam is very interesting. Now, the task will be tying all these wonderful things together with the Silk Road.
Methodology is super important with this project. The organization of this entire process will either make us or break us. Managing our time, compiling our evidence, presenting our findings and arranging our story map must be on our top priority list. Even though deciding on a location and time period supersedes all these things, Team Sky needs to come to solid consensus on these issues very soon. Am I worried? Not at all. We each have our own way of doing things. I am confident that my team members are busy digging for sources and information. I’m quite sure they find the task of focusing on a particular society on or near the Silk Road just a difficult as I do, but as a team we will prevail. So far, the information that Ive encounter is relevant but solidifying one particular society is hard.
While finding a particular society to focus on is a task, on the other hand our class readings have been very helpful. The readings are long, but at the same time they contain vital names and dates of societies that thrived on the Silk Road. The reading, Periplus of the Erythraean Sea revealed the names of some historical Persian societies that thrived on maritime Silk Road. It described the flourishing trade of frankincense through the Arabian peninsula and further into India. Even though the article did not talk about beauty and body images directly, I was able to get a sense of the culture on the Arabian peninsula and the maritime routes impact on the culture.
So, as I close, I look forward to putting more pieces of together and making more connections between beauty and body images as it pertains to the Silk Road. In the near future I anticipate more correspondence with my Team about their methods and their individual findings. I embrace my Teams unique ability to get things done so, I hope the task of choosing a society and a time period is not to overwhelming. If we find that it is too overwhelming, I hope that we can discuss our issues and try to resolve them together. I have a great feeling about our process and an even more better feeling about the outcome of our Silk Road project.
Reflection-Sky
Over this week, we’ve had a lot of changes and compromises with our topic. But now I think we have narrowed it down to a particular city: Urumqi, which is in the Xinjiang area. Since this city has a mixture of the Uyghur people and the Han, it seems to serve as a meeting place for different cultures and ideas and provide a lot of information about the effects of that. Both Nathan and Tiejii seem to have found information about their subtopics from within these regions, and I’ve found a little information as well. However, since my topic of healthcare is more universal, I don’t think I will have too much difficulty with finding good sources. One thing we still need to do is find a time period or figure out what type of narrative we want to pursue, such as a comparison between historical and contemporary ideas. I think as more research is done a decision about this can be reached. I also hope that the meeting with Eric and Zhihong next week will help to clarify things. Like others have been saying, I think one of the reasons it has been so difficult to find a topic and stick to it is due to the broadness and possibility of the Silk Road. Hopefully, we will be able to find lots of information about the topic we are currently exploring, and also have some fun with researching and learning new information!
All of the digital meetings have been incredibly helpful and have made me feel a lot less anxious about the project. I have never used search engines like JSTOR before to find academic papers, so it was nice learning how to use that and other databases, in order to find journals that may not show up with just a google search. Also, learning about metadata and the site to use made me feel a lot more confident about sourcing images. I have always been kind of paranoid about plagiarism and accidentally not sourcing something correctly, but after seeing how easy to use this site is I’m not as worried.
The digital aspect I’m most worried about is the story map. I’m looking forward to receiving instruction on how to make the map, because I feel it may relieve some of my fears over the technicalities. But on the narrative side of things, my group is still struggling a little on how to arrange the map. Hopefully as we do more research and narrow down a time period, a cohesive narrative will begin to emerge.
Starting Routines and Moving Forward
So I guess this is like my first ~official~ blog post. Well, as a TA for the Silk Road course, I do not have a bunch to say about the Silk Road project itself, for my part in the greater project is not until later in the semester. However, there has been a lot going on in regards to other work for the course as well as the Sky Team dynamics, and surprise, surprise, I’m stressing.
The Sky Team 9/22/16
The Sky Team is still working on narrowing down on a topic that will 1) have enough research to sustain the scope of the project, 2) be interesting and compelling for everyone in the group, and 3) work within the narrative format that is required for the Story Maps. And it is both frustrating and amazing how difficult it is to come up with a research topic within a group dynamic! I have done several research projects in school, mostly by myself, but I did do some in groups. However, the groups were smaller and we had, what felt like, more structure in terms of prompt and expectation. This Silk Road research project feels gigantic because there is SO MUCH that can be researched. How on Earth do we figure out a specific and narrow topic- a single drop- out of the entire ocean of information?? Hopefully meeting with the professors within the next week will help the team decide on a topic.
Also, our team lost a member this week. We are sad to see them go, but I do not think that it will be a huge deal for the project itself because we have not solidified a topic yet. It might make it easier to decide meetings and such as well. Speaking of, it has also been difficult trying to get everyone on the team together and to communicate with each other about the project. Since I am a TA and play more of a mentoring and advisory role, there is only so much that I can do about my team not communicating or talking outside of class and meetings with me. We have started doing weekly meetings all together, so hopefully that will help a little.
I think that I am also feeling overwhelmed because I am not actually a part of the research, so it feels out of my hands. But at the same time, I feel a responsibility for my team. Being a TA is like I am sitting outside of my team, in a weird limbo between student and teacher. Needless to say, navigating the role as a TA has been a very challenging part of the course so far! But I’ll get it!
Initial Reflection-Elise Tangedal
One thing that definitely helped speed up the decision-making process were the interest sheets we filled out and the preliminary groups that Eric and Zhihong created. That way, since we all had similar interests, we could begin to narrow down a topic within those interests, rather than having to go through all the options the Silk Road can offer. All of us were interested in the rights of women and other marginalized people.We also had an interest in the effects of religion on women, along with the impact of women on spirituality, education, and health. We then tried to further narrow this topic down through discussion of specific areas or groups we were interested in, like nomads and pastoral societies or Afro-Eurasian sites. We also tried to find a certain time period, or ways of comparison, like historical versus contemporary, as points to use to focus our narrative. Eventually, we focused on a more recent period of time, the 18th and 20th centuries, in order to get the most information about the topics that we found most interesting. We also chose the Arabian Sea area, and chose to look at the effects Islam had on topics such as health, femininity, queer identities (if there are sources available), standards of beauty, and race. In order to get to a more narrow and specific topic, we used some of the strategies that had been discussed in class. In summary, to get to our topic we found common or related personal interests and then narrowed the topic to focus on those things.
My role in this group is as the facilitator as well as the harmonizer. I am comfortable not only with being a leader, but also with communicating with others, which will be necessary for setting up meeting times. I also think I am suited for being a harmonizer because I am often calm and nonbiased, and so I can help others through any problems.
The subtopic I will be focusing on for this project is health, which I am pretty excited about. I have almost never done a project on physical health (I am normally more focused on a mental health perspective), so I am looking forward to learning more about a topic I’ve barely even thought about before. It’s not one I would have necessarily chosen for myself, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more it seems to fit. I like learning about different ways of looking at and solving problems, and am also wondering what similarities I’ll find. Since it is a topic I know next to nothing about, I’m wondering if it will open up new areas of interests I had never thought about before. So even though it is not the topic I would have pictured myself doing, I am not disappointed.
I think my biggest anxieties are about the making of an online map and the amount of work ahead of us.I have very little experience with technology, so I am worried that the map will present many challenges and technical difficulties. I am also worried about the amount of information we are going to be collecting: since we are tackling a few different topics, it may be difficult to synthesize into a cohesive narrative. I do have hope that our topic will come together though: a lot of the subtopics can be related to each other. Teiji’s topic of race and beauty standards relates well to Nathan’s possible topic of femininity, since all those topics emphasize physical perspectives on women. My topic of health and Jamie’s topic of education also go well together, since the standard of education could be correlated with the quality of health care women receive. Perception of women can also play into all of our topics, since negative perceptions of women could lead to inferior education and less care when it comes to women’s health. But even though our subtopics have all of this similarities and connections, an overabundance or a lack of information would still disrupt cohesiveness. So, another thing I am slightly worried about is being able to find enough information about certain topics, such as queer identities.
So far, I feel our team dynamic has been incredibly positive, and we haven’t had to deal with any issues in that regard, at least from my perspective. We have been very respectful and supportive of each other’s ideas, as well as trying our best to find solutions and make revisions in order to better support our interest. One good example of this was Teiji doing her best to help Nathan get a chance to research his preferred topic, by asking a lot of questions about possible ways it could be done. The group has also been flexible, having the ability to support the plan even if their original ideas didn’t make it. I, for example, originally wanted to study nomadic cultures. But as the plan solidified, more team members wanted to study the more Arabic areas of the Silk Road. I went with it, and I am now very excited for and interested in our current place of research, even though it wasn’t what I originally wanted.
One thing I am interested in trying to find for research is sources from within the area itself. A lot of times, with these areas along the Silk Road, we see a European perspective rather than the viewpoint of the inhabitants. I hope that these sources are not scarce and that we get a chance to fully experience these perspectives.
I think that I have done a lot of good work in class when it comes to brainstorming and coming up with ideas, and helping to narrow the topic. I also have gotten a lot of information from the assigned readings in the class. One thing I do need to start doing, however, is some outside research on my own time. Now that we have our overarching area and our subtopics decided, I need to start getting some information about my individual topic. Also, as facilitator, I need to find a time for our group to meet and work.
Initial Reflective Post – Nathan G.
Choosing group research topics always tends to be a painful and messy process – it’s hard enough as an individual – so I was very pleasantly surprised by how smooth the ordeal was for our group. From the outset, we all had similar foci in mind for the project; if I’m not mistaken, I believe everyone in the group had written something about gender/female/queer identity on our initial interest cards. Since all three sort of go hand-in-hand, it wasn’t hard to hone down that portion of our topic. The rest (time period, geographic distribution, and other unifying links) took a little bit of work to finesse, but it wasn’t anything particularly difficult. We were all very willing to focus in on the western parts of the Silk Road, and once we had that down, we bounced off of instructor suggestions to settle our focus on the 18th-20th centuries, as well as unifying our entire research question under our individual topics’ relations to Islam. We’re currently looking at designating a specific interest to each group member for our individual research, which we’ll then bring together and connect to one another’s topics (using Islam as a parameter throughout the research so that we’ll actually be able to connect what we have). None of our individual topics are completely unrelated to the rest, either – I’m focusing on queer identity and its relation to Islam, another member is looking at racial identity through the same lens, and other group members are looking at the various facets of female existence in the region and time period we chose.
My individual role within the group has become that of the timekeeper. Personally, I’m very happy to have this role – I’m terrible in public speaking situations, so had that fallen on me the group likely would have suffered as a whole. Similarly, while I’m usually good in leadership roles, it’s harder for me to bring out my assertive side and tell people to pull themselves together when I’m not already close to the people I’m working with; while it wouldn’t have been catastrophic, we might have gotten off to a rocky start had I ended up the facilitator. Timekeeper works out far better, as it allows me to fill a leadership-type role without necessarily needing to chew people out. Instead, I’ll be working to figure out some preliminary due dates for the various pieces of our project and monitoring where people are in their work so that dates can be adjusted to better fit our team’s progress.
Given how well everyone’s interests within Team Sky aligned, I’m not expecting too many issues to arise due to team dynamics. We’re all on the same page (at least so far) about where we’re taking our research and final product, and we’ve worked to build a research topic that would allow everyone some wiggle room to pursue their own specific interests. Everyone has been quite supportive of one another, and everyone wanted to ensure that no one’s interests were edged out in refining our topic. Additionally, I think we’ve all been given roles within the group that will play to our abilities and benefit how we work together. We were lucky in that Teiji feels comfortable in a public speaking role, and that covers what tends to be one of the shakiest parts of any project. Jamie was on top of notes during the class activities we’ve done so far, so she definitely seems like a great pick for our group’s recorder, and Elise is serving as facilitator and ensuring that we don’t unravel at the seams – I’m already good friends with her, so I know that should conflict arise she’ll definitely be able to diffuse any tensions and find a suitable solution.
That said, I’m not entirely without concerns for our final product. My personal interest within our topic is queer identity; belonging to the queer community, it’s a topic that I have a personal hold in and I initially chose to focus on it because I figured my connection to it would keep me invested and help bring out the best of what I have to give. Even so, I’m worried that it might end up falling through due to a lack of sources. When we were narrowing down our time period, we deliberately chose a more modern time-frame so that we’d hopefully have more luck in finding information for both myself and some of the other more specified interests that other group members had. I’m still worried in spite of this, though. I have a backup focus should queer identity fall through (the role of femininity in religious ritual), but I hope that I don’t lose some steam if I ultimately need to make that switch.
I also want to say that I think that the way the teams for this project were initially chosen was a fantastic system. One of my biggest anxieties with group projects is simply finding a group to join; it takes me awhile to get comfortable enough so that I can really interact with new people and not have it be awkward, so if we had been told to figure out teams ourselves I likely would have ended up in a group with a topic I wasn’t interested in and knowing myself I probably would have been too uncomfortable to say anything. By having the instructors attempt to pair us based on our interests, that anxiety was cut out, and while I can’t speak for others, it certainly benefited me.
As for my performance within the team and within the class so far, I’d say I’ve been pulling my weight. It’s hard to truly assess that at this point since we’ve barely done that much of anything, but I haven’t been neglecting any work and I’ve been looking into some potential sources that might aid in our research. I tried to be active in the narrowing of our topic and I gave suggestions for how other group members could incorporate their primary interests into our final product. If this reflection were due a week or two later I’m sure I’d have more to say, but that’s about it up until now.
Initial Reflective Post- Sydney
My role on the Sky research team and in the class as a whole is being a TA (a.k.a. Silkworm). The duties that I have as a TA involve acting as a facilitator and mentor to the team, as well as a liaison between my team and the professors of the course, Zhihong Chen and Eric Mortensen. Apart from the teams, I have the role of participating in the class as a student by doing the readings and taking quizzes and tests. Furthermore, I will be working with the other TAs to pull together all of the information (including writings, pictures, documents, etc.) from the teams into one big compilation map of research. In regards to my position as a TA, I believe that I can best assist my team by being available for any questions or concerns that the team might have, as well as doing my best to help resolve those issues, as they arise, in a timely manner. Furthermore, I can help make sure that the team is meeting deadlines and making adequate progress on the research project by checking in on a weekly basis. My biggest apprehension about being a TA is letting go of the control over the research and over the project itself. I have never been in the role of TA, so I will have to learn how to step back and let my group make decisions, but be available for help or direction.
Concerning the course itself, I am excited about physically seeing and experiencing some of the places and cultures that we are learning about this Fall when I attend the study abroad trip to China in January. For instance, it will be interesting to see the different landscapes that helped shape the Silk Road and helped shape the communities that travelled and/or settled on the land. Furthermore, most of the readings and videos for the course have been extremely interesting. I would say that I have enjoyed the documentary “A Thousand Kilometers Beyond the Yellow River,” and the music that we have been exposed to so far, such as Mongolian throat singing and music by Kitaro. I was also intrigued by the article “The Spiritual Identity of the Silk Roads: A Historical Overview of Buddhism and Islam” by Amir H. Zekrgoo because of his discussions about East versus West, and his clear explanation on how new religions form and can be similar to other religions based off of cultural conditions. I think that Zekrgoo’s discussion about East versus West, and the necessity of balance between the two, has many implications that could aid in an inclusive worldview and aid in helpful approaches to everyday life, in small and large matters.
Additionally, I am just so enthusiastic about the content overall in this course. I enrolled in the class Spread of Buddhism Across Asia my final semester at Guilford and I had a wonderful time learning—mainly for the first time—about Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and the cultures surrounding the creation and spread of those beliefs. It was actually the Spread of Buddhism Across Asia course that made me so eager to come back after I graduated to take the Silk Road course specifically. This Silk Road coarse is allowing me to expand and apply the knowledge that I gained from the Spread of Buddhism Across Asia course while learning about many new ideas, religions, peoples, landscapes, interactions, and history.
Although I am extremely enthused about the course and I am very grateful for the opportunity that I have to take the course, there are still aspects of the course that I am nervous about (mainly because I am just a nervous person). Firstly, I am apprehensive about learning all of the technological aspects of the course. I have never done web design or anything of the like, so I wonder how easy it will be for me to pick it up (and then be able to teach others if they need help). Technology is not difficult for me to learn or understand, but it is not automatically intuitive for me, so it takes me a couple of tries to learn and/or figure out. Additionally, I am anxious about the TAs’ responsibilities for the larger research project because it will be a lot of work in a very short amount of time. I worry that it will be difficult to balance those responsibilities with the other work in the course (such as readings and quizzes), as well as to balance personal time and jobs outside of Guilford. As of now, I feel stressed about the amount of work we are all being held accountable for, so I wonder how others are feeling about the workload. Furthermore, I realize that I am a perfectionist as well, so it takes me longer to finish assignments, thus making me worry more about workload! In order to combat my anxiety and slow (but thorough!) work process, I am aiming to organize my time to make myself more efficient. One way that I am planning to organize my time will be by trying to get things for the course done in advance, because I also have to plan around jobs and for personal time.
Overall, I have noticed the theme of balance arising within this semester for myself, so I will embrace this opportunity to learn how to healthily maintain equilibrium mentally, emotionally, and physically while I strive to do the best that I can in this course and in the rest of my life as well. I will strive to focus on balance and see how that affects my stress and worry. I am so ready to learn more about a part of the world that I do not know a lot about and to hopefully help educate others down the road. It is daunting to think of how little I know about so many other peoples and cultures in the world, but I will do my best to learn what I can in the time I am given with an open mind and open heart.
Initial Reflective Blog Post-Tieji
Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “Allah is beautiful and He loves beauty.” [Sahīh Muslim (911)]
Every culture has its own definition of what beauty is and thanks to patriarchy and its hegemonic nature, society has always allotted this category to women. Don’t be fooled, men are beautiful too. However, the explorations of a man’s body are recognized as scientific, while a woman’s body is perceived more like a sensual part of nature. It is our bodies that people look to for the outlining of what is to be desired in a society. The woman’s body has been the epitome of what constitutes ‘attractiveness’. As I stated in the opening sentence, every culture has its own definition of which expressions of beauty and body images are acceptable. For example, westerners applaud a woman’s slim physique whereas in countries like South Africa a woman’s heftiness is celebrated. Beauty and body images are not unitary and because of this flexibility there a varying degrees of what one may define as ‘beautiful’. Those ideas and images pertaining to women, particularly Muslim women situated near the Arabian Sea, will be the focus of my research for Team Sky’s digital Silk Road project. The Silk Route was a vital part of the trade between early societies that stretched from North Africa to East China. Not only were tangible goods merchandised, but ideas concerning a woman’s body and body images were also exchanged on the Silk Road. Back in the day, Islam was the top religion of this region. Today, this is still the case. So, based on modern findings covering the Silk Road, what is the overall consensus of Muslim women’s bodies? What contributions has the Silk Road made towards these ideas of beauty and body image? How has fashion and the obsession of obtaining quality silk garments perpetuated these ideas? And above all, what are the intersections of beauty, body image, status, love, sex and marriage among the women of this area? My examination of these areas will attempt to answer these questions and make connections between the Silk Road and its influence on the lives of Muslim women located in areas near the Arabian Sea.
Initially, my research was to investigate to classification of race and the term Afro-Eurasian and its intersection on beauty and body image. Now, my focus will be aimed at the beauty and body images for Muslim women in areas near the Arabian Sea with access to the southern Silk Road. Since my team’s project is solely focused on a modern account, and the majority of the information that I found pertaining to race was mostly historical, I decided to concentrate on the contemporary study of bodies and body images of Muslim women along the Silk Road. The process for discerning this topic will consist of research of the countries near the Arabian Sea with access to the southern Silk Road. Because the Silk Road (north and south) covers so much land mass, only a condensing of one area is necessary for my project. Digital mapping tools will be the primary tool in locating societies within this region. I plan to electronically pinpoint these areas on a digital map and upload data concerning Muslim women’s bodies and body images for the locations. While another member of Team Sky examines the religious side of women in this area, my research will detail the secular side of Muslim women’s bodies and explore their connection to the Silk Road. Another key part of the process is obtaining modern resources about Islamic feminism. Will this be a problem? I predict that this will not be a challenge. Today, there is an abundance of scholars, journalists, authors and activists that document advocacy for Muslim women’s rights. I question the cultural exchange of ideas mediated through the Silk Road for these rights and how these concepts are expressed through women’s clothing, make-up, hairstyles and so forth. Along with using digital tools, books, and journal articles (via Guilford’s Hege Library database), I will assemble information that pertains the lives of women on the Silk Road, specifically the southern route. Books regarding the norms and values of Muslim women, feminism in Islam, and even modern day fashion trends will be valuable to the research for this project. In addition to those topics, a closer look at the Silk Road’s marketplace for fine linen clothing will suffice for this part. Another very important aspect of my research process will be an exploration of the Holy Qur’an. In this book the conditions of love, sex and marriage will provide an inside look at the moral code designated for Muslim women. Furthermore, how does this moral law appeal to an identified Muslim woman living a secular lifestyle on the Silk Road? The key factor to my methodology will be a concise articulation and organization of all the research findings.
If you don’t know who Team Sky is let me take time to introduce them to the audience. Our Team Mentor is Sydney Brown. Her position will help gather ideas, guide and support the team as it moves along with the research. So far, Sydney has provided valuable ideas and insight towards the team’s project. The Recorder/Innovator will be overseen by Jamie Skjoldager. The recorder will memo (digitally or otherwise) notes taken from discussions our group’s research. Since the formation of teams, Jamie has brainstormed, documented each group member’s contact information and submitted the group’s proposal. The title of Timekeeper/Checker belongs to Nathan Grannan. This position will ensure that deadlines, meetings and other group responsibilities are kept in a timely manner. At the present time Nathan is assembling calendar dates and times for meetings. Team Sky’s Facilitator/Harmonizer will be maintained by Elise Tangedal. This position will organize group meetings and ensure the stability of our group if conflict may arise. Elise is equipped with a positive attitude that will surely be an asset moving forward with our digital project. Finally, the position of the Presenter/Runner will be fulfilled by myself, Tieji Williams. The presenter will act as a reporter for the group correspond with the class and the instructors. The presenter will give the final presentation of the research findings and conclusions for the project. Thus far, only the announcement of Team Sky’s thesis statement was presented. However, I look forward to presenting my instructors and classmates with valuable information regarding a modern look at women in Islam through the lenses of gender, beauty, health and education along the coast of the Arabian Sea with access to the Silk Road.
Typically, when I work with groups I don’t mind taking the leadership role in ensuring that things get done in an efficient and timely manner. What can I say, Guilford has taught me well. When it comes to group work I tend to do a lot of quarterbacking in hopes my teammates will catch or run the ball in the end zone for a touchdown. (Excuse the football analogy, but football season is upon us) This was my purpose for typing a full rough draft of the proposal and presenting to my team in class before its due date. I did this to alleviate a last minute rush to complete the assignment. I handed the proposal off to my teammates and they edited, arranged, polished and submitted the final draft. This a wonderful example of teamwork. As we move forward with our project, my intention is to keep a positive attitude about the research, my teammates and the overall outcome of our work on the digital Silk Road project.