Pedagogies of Evidence, Accident, and Discovery: Teaching and Learning Ethnographic Methodology, Theory, and Serendipity, Part IV
Stephen Lyon Durham University March 7, 2017 My University is considered one of the research intensive universities of Britain. We are one of the largest in terms of faculty numbers as well as student intake. We teach methods at every year of our undergraduate programmes and all single honours students are required to do a double dissertation module in their final year in which they must produce or analyse primary data as part of a supervised independent project. We struggle with weaning them off the excessive teaching that has come to characterise the sorts of schools from which our...
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Stephen Chrisomalis Wayne State University March 7, 2017 I teach linguistic anthropology at a large public research university as a program requirement for both undergraduate and graduate students in anthropology and linguistics; for most of them, this is their only exposure to the subfield, its methods, and theories. This presents a challenge – to get students out of their typical ways of thinking about evidence and drawing their attention to the relation between discourse and cognition – but also an opportunity. I have never found it to be particularly challenging to interest...
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Wesley Allen-Arave University of New Mexico March 7, 2017 Research in anthropology requires a balance of flexibility and focus. A challenge in anthropology graduate training is imparting students with flexibility to adapt their research plans as complications and insights arise without tempering the students’ focus on recording compelling data for their research question(s). Unlike scientists in disciplines characterized by tightly controlled lab experiments, anthropologists generally observe people in their natural environments and lack control over the research setting. This creates...
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Douglas William Hume Northern Kentucky University March 7, 2017 In the fall 2016 semester I was scheduled to teach an upper-division undergraduate course titled “Ethnographic Methods and Research” in which I use McCurdy, Spradley, and Shandy’s The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in Complex Society (2004) to introduce students to qualitative ethnosemantic research methods. It so happened that one of the sociologists in my department left the university last spring who was scheduled to teach a course titled “Qualitative Research Methods”, which had similar student learning objectives...
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Call for Abstracts: “Why Anthropology Matters: Making Anthropology Relevant and Engaging a Larger Public Audience through Pedagogy” Proposed Executive/Invited Session American Anthropological Association 2017 Meetings Washington, DC Nov 29-Dec 3rd If you are interested in participating, please send a tentative title and 250 word abstract to Audrey Ricke, acricke@umail.iu.edu, by Feb 9. PROPOSED SESSION : “Why Anthropology Matters: Making Anthropology Relevant and Engaging a Larger Public Audience through Pedagogy” One of the main venues through which anthropologists...
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