Intro Cultural Ethnographies?

[Katherine E. Hoffman]

I consistently teach Veiled Sentiments and Wisdom Sits in Places to intro classes.
They consistently work well. I'm very resistent to the idea that students should
only read new texts. They need to be able to work w a range of texts. As for
chapters Kapchans Words about herbs from her Gender on the Market is always a HUGE
hit. Pair w Bakhtin or lecture on him slash Volosinov.

> For what it's worth (and I'm speaking from my experiences both teaching a
> ethnography themed 101 course and from recent TA experiences), I have become
> increasingly disenchanted with using full books/ethnographies for teaching
> intro level courses. I think it often limited the flexibility of the
> professor (or at least it did for me... granted I'm in training) and based
> on my TA experiences, I think they can often overwhelm students (especially
> depending on the reading/writing expectations).
>
> While it can take more time, I've found that a syllabus composed of
> tactically chosen articles and book sections -- which can be effectively
> unpacked either in the class (or if you're designing for it, in sections) --
> to be far more productive for intro students.
>
> To that point, perhaps you could give a framework of what you meant by an
> "ethnography" based course? Is the goals to construct ethnographic
> assignments for the students to conduct? Or was it more that you were hoping
> to teach fundamental/101 concepts about Anthropology via engagements with
> ethnographic data?
>
> One path suggests one set of texts, the other suggests different ones.
>
> - Matt
>
>
> -----------------------------
> Matthew Bernius
> PhD Student | Cultural Anthropology | Cornell University |
> http://anthropology.cornell.edu
> Researcher At Large | Open Publishing Lab @ the Rochester Institute of
> Technology | http://opl.cias.rit.edu
> mBernius at gMail.com | http://www.mattbernius.com | @mattBernius
> My calendar: http://bit.ly/hNWEII
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 2:43 PM, Leila Monaghan <leila.monaghan at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi, I am thinking of changing over my intro to cultural anthropology to an
>> ethnography based course.
>>
>


-- 
*********************************
Katherine E. Hoffman
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Northwestern University
1810 Hinman Avenue
Evanston, IL  60208
847.491.4565
khoffman at northwestern.edu
http://www.cas.northwestern.edu/anthropology/faculty/hoffman.html