Experimenting with Ethnography: Craft, Genre & Conceptual Work

1 Course Unit

This course takes inspiration from conversations and practices occurring at the interfaces of cultural anthropology, creative nonfiction, and experimental ethnography. Anthropologist Stuart McLean (2017) has asked: "What might become of anthropology if it were to suspend its sometime claims to be a social science? What if it were to turn instead to exploring its affinities with art and literature as a mode of engaged creative practice carried forward in a world heterogeneously composed of humans and other than humans?" At the same time, the emergence of the environmental and medical humanities as academic disciplines in the twenty-first century reflect the growing conviction that environmental and public health problems cannot be solved by science and technology alone. Instead, the need for public engaged writing and experimental methods and alliance building between the arts and social and natural sciences ask us to reflect about the craft, expanding genre, and conceptual work of our ethnographic practice. In this course, we will push our methodological premises and analytical training to experiment with the contexts, human interlocutors, matters of concern, and diverse materialities that emerge from and participate in our ethnographic research. This is a writing intensive seminar, and we will workshop different elements of the craft of ethnographic writing, as well as introduce several multimodal techniques into our modes of ethnographic conceptualization. Fall or Spring 1 Course Unit