Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

In depth study of ethnographic methodology as practiced, theorized and debated by social and cultural anthropologists. Course will include anthropological analyses of multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to, and adaptations of, ethnographic methodology and methods. Elective course for MA and PhD students in Sociology and Anthropology. Students from other departments and faculties may enrol with permission of instructor. Course will be offered in response to student demand, dependent on availability of departmental resources.

COURSE DETAILS:

Ethnographic methodologies are (re)emerging as a focus of contemporary work in anthropology, sociology, and across many academic disciplines, media studies, creative arts, and political activism. We will explore experimental methodologies including multisensory, imaginative, and performative ethnography. In addition to working with conventional textual forms, we will explore new ethnographic writing, sounds and images, installations and exhibitions, and live performances.  

This will be a practice-based course focused on two irreducibly interrelated questions: “why do ethnography?” and “how may I do ethnography?” Students are invited to work on developing their own research proposals in relation to key debates surrounding relationships between methodology and epistemology, ethnography and social theory, ethical/political questions, and inter/intra/trans/anti disciplinary collaborations. We will read and watch and listen to and debate emerging work that responds to critiques of conventional hierarchies of knowledge, and that challenges ethnographers to engage with embodied, multisensory, emplaced and experiential epistemologies.  While these subjects currently generate considerable theoretical debate, less attention has been paid to methodological implications:  how may we learn, study and communicate, diverse practices of meaning-making, circulation of knowledge, and means of expression? These are the questions will guide our inquiries.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

RECOMMENDED READING: