College Seminar (101-7-3)

Topic

Ethnography of College Community

Instructors

Elizabeth Anne Smith

Meeting Info

University Hall 118: Mon, Wed 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

How do students build community at Northwestern University, in the years after pandemic has turned the world upside-down and transformed many social practices? How do cultural anthropologists write about people and places? What is your place at Northwestern? 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/academic project presentation. An important part of the course consists of in-class roundtables which pair NU campus groups with Evanston and Chicago organizations and individuals examining intersecting power structures such as race, gender, sexuality, and economic inequality, and cultural production. 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, maps, and hand-drawn illustrations to present their research results along with more traditional academic analyses. Course materials include one text for purchase ($18/ebook to $35/new print copy) as well as book chapters, articles, and film/media accessed in Canvas.

Registration Requirements

First-year students only

Class Materials (Required)

Field Notes: A Guided Journal for Doing Anthropology 1st Edition. Vivanco, Luis A. ISBN 9780190642198

Class Attributes

WCAS College Seminar