Semester:
Offered:
Prof. Damina Khaira
By Arrangement
This course is focused on preparing students to do anthropological fieldwork and develop their own research projects. Through concrete case studies and practical exercises students will be introduced to different approaches to developing research problems, conducting research, and ethnographic writing. Topics covered will include defining research questions and objects of study, situating projects within scholarly literature, and bringing together research data and analysis in different forms of anthropological writing.
The aim of the course is not an exhaustive overview of research design but to familiarize students with some of the key practices and concerns of anthropological research and writing. The course seeks to guide students in reading anthropological texts, understanding the range of data and its representations, unpacking the analytical moves being made in the text, and thinking through the implications of such presentation.
The course is divided into two main components. The first focuses on a case study of a developing anthropological work by the instructor. Through select readings related to their topic of interest and original research documents (proposals, fieldnotes, media, news reports, photographs, analytical essays, among others) students will learn the process of turning a research question into an anthropological project. The case study is also meant to prepare students for the experience of conducting their own research and serve as an example of how to transform research findings into anthropological writing.
Simultaneously, this course is also a research practicum in which students will apply what they have learned to design their own anthropological projects and share with each other research goals, experiences, and components of their emerging work. Through structured assignments, seminar workshops, and regular individual meetings with their instructor students will produce an original research essay based on their research over the course of the semester.
Required of all concentrators in Anthropology.