Ethnographic Methods

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of ethnographic methods. In the class, we will consider the ways ethnography works as both a mode of inquiry and a form of knowledge production. We will examine the kinds of questions anthropologists ask, as well as the relationship between research questions, methodological approaches, data analysis, and knowledge. We will examine the ways scholars marshal evidence to address their questions, and practically, how they arrive at that evidence. We will study different components of ethnographic fieldwork, such as participant observation, interviewing, photography, object analysis, archival work, digital methods, and qualitative surveys. In so doing, we will engage with the complexities surrounding ethnographic research, including how one negotiates access during fieldwork, the racialized and gendered subjectivities that inhere in fieldwork, the ethics of knowledge production, and the politics of representation. The class entails both critical engagement with scholarship, and practical exercises. The goal is to give students practical, theoretically grounded insights into fieldwork in order to help them understand how to develop and carry out a research project.