2024 Theses Master's

Re/searching in Second Spring

Zhou, Ru-Jün

An experimental approach to oral history, focusing on the midlife experiences of Chinese immigrant and Chinese American women, is presented through a spiral research methodology that intertwines past, present, and future. It is a meditation on the evolution of the researcher’s sense-making and positionality, fostering an expanded concept of "shared authority" that resonates with her cultural context.

The work invites us to turn our gaze inward, tapping into the inherent wisdom of our bodies—a practice deeply embedded in Eastern wisdom traditions over millennia—and from this introspective vantage point, to embrace the collective body of community narratives, mirroring the notion of "oral history from below," a concept that finds its roots in the history-making of the West. Using a historical novella, readers are invited to an embodied listening journey, metabolizing the knowing and insight of a lineage of quiet voices.