Graduate Residency and Adjustments to My Final Thesis

I recently attended a residency for my college’s graduate students.  The residency provides an opportunity to confer about each other’s final master degree project.  It also gives graduate students a chance to discuss their research and project development with a variety of instructors. During the residency, I managed to confer with a few instructors with whom I will be working for the next few semesters.  Invariably, every one of them mentioned that they felt my final thesis was still not narrow enough.

I weighed the advice that each of them provided, and I surmised that I need to limit my research to two of the three Native-born Muslim demographic that will lead to my final project.  Since I have been hard pressed to find literary works by native Latina Muslim women, I will reserve any of my research about Latino-American Muslims for future study.  Although Latino-American Muslims are a fast growing and dynamic part of the Muslim community in the United States, the need for more focus (and the lack of the necessary authorship) requires that I do not include them in my final project.