ANTH 560: Ethnographic Writing

ANTH 560-001: Ethnographic Writing
(Fall 2022)

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM M

Horizon Hall 4001

Section Information for Fall 2022

Ethnography (writing about people) is the signature genre and research method of socio-cultural anthropology. Although ethnography is part of the origin story of the discipline of anthropology, researchers now use this genre and method in numerous disciplines across the social sciences and humanities, from sociology, education, and public health to cultural, literary, urban, and global studies. This course will enable students to see (or perhaps taste) the “secret sauce” of how ethnographies are made, by reading and analyzing classic and contemporary works, and by learning to write ethnographically themselves. What is distinctive about the epistemologies of the anthropological ethnography? What can its ways of producing knowledge teach us about the politics and poetics of writing as well as issues of power, place, and point of view? Central to the ethnographic endeavor is the writing itself, and so we will also consider issues of form and style, along with narrative and theory. How do anthropologists bring people and places to life through the writing? What does ethnography share with long-form journalism, creative non-fiction and even fiction, and how does it differ from those genres? This course aims to give students the tools, practice, and insight into this process in a course that is part seminar, part workshop. Our study of ethnographic writing will alternate between reading ethnographies and practicing our own writing. We will also evaluate how the general move toward more public facing scholarship in a range of disciplines is connected to how and why we write. Cross listed with ANTH 396-002.

Course Information from the University Catalog