“Bettering Her Education and Widening Her Sphere”

Abstract

This article is a focused response to the call for a “conscious use of crystallization,” in qualitative research. To this end, the author brings into play a full-bodied textual metaphor, the palimpsest, to stimulate the expansion of an integrated crystallization typology—comprised of woven and patched approaches. Appropriated as a textual artifact, the author uses the palimpsest to ground and figure the methodological development of palimpsestuous crystallization. The novel crystallization process places foci on the involved relationship between texts and discourses, that is, intertextuality and interdiscursivity. The author works at developing palimpsestuous crystallization by interleaving liminal coeducational experiences between interrelated texts signifying persistent and dominant discourses on postsecondary coeducation. Wholly, the article is constituent of a larger methodological undertaking in its early stages. The article emerges from a situated and personal narrative that is typified as “more than a back story.”