ANTHRO 330: Advanced Field Methods: Final Project


Professor Karen Nakamura

The entire course leads up to the final project which must be a visual ethnography accompanied by a written ethnography / critical commentary of your fieldsite.

The final project is due in-class on December 9th. A mandatory draft (75% content) is due in-class on December 2nd.

The visual component should consist of at least half a dozen photographs from your fieldsite. For anthropology credit, the write-up should be 25-30 pages and for Fine Arts credit 15-20 pages (inclusive of photos). The write-up should have two components. First an ethnographic description of the field site and the photographs (i.e., what are we seeing here, in a literal sense). The second component should be an intellectual analysis of photoethnography (i.e, how can we interpret what we see here in terms of the micro-culture of the community?). You can also talk about the ethics or questions of representation that come up in your project, but please limit this to one page.

Write-ups should be written for an academic audience.

During the fieldwork, you should be continuously talking with and interviewing the participants. The interviews do not have to be taped (although they can be if you like), however you should be taking copious field notes. The photographs should come out of your fieldwork experience but should also be an integral part of it. Be reflexive, dialogic, and polyvocal (to drop 3 of the most abused tropes in contemporary anthro).

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