Intro Cultural Ethnographies?

[Matthew Bernius]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 9:40 PM, Bruce Mannheim <mannheim at umich.edu> wrote:

>  The problem I ran into (and one
> I'll be better prepared for in the future) is that some (?)/many (?) of the
> students were reading their first sustained non-fiction work.  (They've all
> read novels and they've all read textbooks, which break the world into
> bite-sized chunks.)  So your students might need to be prepared for the
> reading they do before they actually delve into the first book.
>

This has been my experience too. The first couple sections/classes often end
up dedicated to teaching them "how to read" and "extract."

Also, their exposure (or lack there of) to texts that take critical
positions on western stances should be taken into consideration as well.
During the first few weeks, especially if a student has never encountered a
critical social science/humanities course, the seemingly tamest of
statements can lead to the majority of the class shutting down (especially
Freshmen).

-----------------------------
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
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