Field Methods

Catalog description

This course will introduce students to the basic methods of anthropological research, and the range of techniques for gathering information that we call ethnographic fieldwork. We will ask how this tradition began, how it has changed through the course of the 20th century to present, and what new technologies make available new possibilities as we document cultural forms in a variety of scenarios and settings. We will try our hand at key methods in ethnographic research such as participant-observation, structured and unstructured interviewing, and then make our way to thinking about photography and video technologies in the realm of digital media, asking how these have been used in cultural representation in the past and what we might attempt with them in the present. While we cover a breadth of scholarly articles about ethnographic research and working with human subjects, this class will also develop as a workshop in which students produce ethnographic writing, and actively evaluate and guide one anothers work. Students will apply what they learn during the course toward designing their own ethnographic research project, to be presented at the end of the semester.