Things I'm (re)learning

I'm working on an application for a Humanities Center fellowship right now--here's their blurb about it:

2026-2027 Theme: Revolutions

We invite applications for our second annual Global Fellowship Program focused on the theme of revolutions. A revolution signals a foundational shift in action and thought. Whether they take the form of political uprisings, social movements, or collective struggles, revolutions transform our understanding of the world and our place in it by remaking our epistemologies and modes of relating. The word “revolution” also carries a physical and astronomical meaning: a full turn, a return, or a cyclical rotation. A revolution can signal either a dramatic break with the past or the completion of a cycle. Hence revolutions can serve as an entry point to discussions about the nature of change, progress, disruption, and time in our societies. We welcome proposals for Humanities research projects that engage the theme of revolutions, broadly conceived.

Without going into detail about what I'm proposing (or trying to propose), I've come to some realizations about this sort of thing that I'm thinking of sharing with the students in my advanced writing class, who are also working on developing topics, research questions, etc. for their projects. As I wrote in my offline journal (the aforementioned "Thoughts and Frustrations," aka "A Record of My Decline") while I was trying to figure out my "aims" for the project, 

I think here I’m getting at aims (and maybe method, to some extent). What is my purpose? What kinds of questions am I trying to answer? It seems that part of the issue here is that I’m trying to come up with some sort of answer here already. A thesis rather than a research question. This is what I was talking to students about the other day. If this is a research project, I shouldn’t have an answer yet, should I?

It struck me that while I needed to focus on developing a research question, there is still a sneaky sort of thesis involved in that--the question of the significance of that research question. The "so what?" of it. As I put it later, "It’s harder sometimes to come up with a good question than it is to come up with a thesis."

Anyway, back to plugging along at this. I need to get it done by March 1(!), so I'm going to have to settle on something pretty soon.