First-Year Writing Seminar (101-8-1)
Topic
Ethnography of College Community
Instructors
Elizabeth Anne Smith
Dr. Elizabeth Smith’s PhD is in Sociocultural Anthropology from New York University. Her research concerns material culture and nationalism in museums, race and media images of Nubians in Egypt, identification with archaeological sites in nostalgia for Nubia, and how photographs of Nubia circulate in popular culture. Professor Smith has taught courses on cultural anthropology, gender in the Middle East, tourism and museums, and the history of anthropology. Prior to coming to Northwestern in 2013, she was an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Vermont and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California-Berkeley.
Meeting Info
ANTHRO Sem Rm 104 - 1810 Hinmn: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM
Overview of class
How do students build community at Northwestern University, after pandemic has turned the world upside-down and transformed many social practices? How do cultural anthropologists write about people and places? To find out, you will learn and practice cultural anthropology's most famous methods of research and writing, participant observation and writing ethnography. Weekly readings and class discussions will inform your observations of one aspect of college life on campus you choose to study throughout the quarter, building toward a final creative and/or academic project presentation. An important part of the course consists of three student-run in-class roundtables which pair NU campus groups with Evanston organizations examining intersecting power structures such as race, gender, sexuality, and economic inequality. Conducting your own participant-observation research will empower you to 1. make sense of your environment in the current moment, 2. turn an analytical eye toward Northwestern as an institution, and 3. critically develop your new role as a college student. Requirements include participation in class discussion and roundtables, developing your field research project, and your final project presentation which can be creative, analytic, or a mix of both—prior students have written songs, created podcasts, and hand-drawn illustrations to present their research results along with more traditional academic analyses. Course materials include one text for purchase ($30 new) as well as book chapters, articles, and film/media accessible for free online.
Class Materials (Required)
Field Notes: A Guided Journal for Doing Anthropology by Luis A. Vivanco. Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780190642198. Available as an ebook 17.99 or print $34.99 new or used print copies may be purchased online
Class Attributes
WCAS Writing Seminar