Field Research Practicum

A practice-based introduction to ethnographic fieldwork. Students experiment with participant-observation, interviewing and conversation, taking and interpreting fieldnotes, oral and life histories, multi-modal and virtual ethnography, archival research. These methods are explored in light of ethical, political, and epistemological stakes of ethnographic research: the space of "the field," identity and identification, privacy and anonymity, regulatory ethics, collaboration, advocacy. Students design and conduct a research project while developing a critical appreciation of the possibilities and limits of ethnographic research.