[Linganth] Ethnography of Gatherings: AAA Open Call

[Emily Kuret]

Dear Colleagues,


Grigory Gorbun and I are organizing a *roundtable discussion *for the AAA
in St. Louis, and are looking for additional participants to join us! The
abstract and submission instructions are below. Feel free to circulate and
please let us know if you have any questions!


Ethnography of Gatherings

Ethnographic fieldwork is traditionally imagined as grounded in continuous
presence within a bounded site. Recent methodological debates have
challenged this model in different ways, questioning the ideal of sustained
immersion and emphasizing fieldwork shaped by interruption, uneven access,
and repeated returns rather than continuous co-presence (eg. Günel and
Watanabe 2024). Yet these approaches still tend to assume that the field
itself persists over time, even if the researcher’s engagement with it is
partial, discontinuous, or but one part of a multi-party collaboration.

With this roundtable we are hoping to challenge this assumption by asking
what happens when the people we study do not form a steady, co-present
community, and the field itself is not continuously existing – at least not
in the same form, or at the same scale. What is required of fieldworkers
when research communities articulate themselves through gatherings that
assemble and disperse, leaving long intervals in between? Indeed, what sort
of methodological attentions does the study of such communities require,
afford, or foreclose for those wishing to study them ethnographically?

We invite contributions to a roundtable on doing fieldwork around
intermittently convened events, what we call “gatherings.” We are
interested in cases where communities of people come together at particular
moments – *competitions, workshops, fairs, residencies, conventions,
festivals* – but do not remain in sustained contact in between. How do we
do ethnography when the field is only there some of the time? How do we
build relationships, decide where to direct our research, and make use of
the periods between the gatherings? We are especially interested in
contributions that speak directly to project design, fieldwork practices,
and concrete strategies.

The roundtable organizers are Grigory Gorbun (American Bar Foundation), who
works on moot courts, and Emily Kuret (University of Chicago), who works on
socially engaged art in Greece. *If you would like to participate in the
discussion, please send a note to Grigory (ggorbun at abfn.org
<ggorbun at abfn.org>) and Emily (kuret at uchicago.edu <kuret at uchicago.edu>)
briefly describing your research and its connection to our theme. *

Thanks, everyone!

Very best,
Emily and Grigory

-- 
Emily C. Kuret (she)
PhD Candidate in Anthropology
University of Chicago
Ling Anth Lab <https://voices.uchicago.edu/linganthlab/> |  Art Portfolio
<http://www.emilyckuret.com/> | *Undertheorized zine
<https://undertheorizedzine.com/>!*
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