To help you think of ideas, it can be useful to look around in your local area at groups of people that might be interesting to study. Whether your paper is based on people of different ages, different ethnic groups, or any other shared characteristics, using a local group can be easier when it comes to researching for your paper. It may be that you want your ethnographic essay to be based on people of interest in the way that they have helped others.

A good way of thinking of topics is to think of inspirational people that have helped you during your life, or helped others. For example, you may wish to look at the nurses in a particular area or volunteers, or any other groups of people that do inspiring things. It could even be that you look at groups of people that have overcome adversity in their life, such as people who have suffered serious illnesses. If you’re still unsure of what ideas to use for your paper, then a good solution is to look at prewritten papers. It could be that you source past papers that have been written by students from your university or college, or you could even look for free papers that are widely available online. Of course, if you choose to use topic ideas from old papers, it is important that you take care to make the title is unique as possible, so as not to put yourself at risk of plagiarism.

Whilst looking at old papers that other people have written, so as to help think of topic ideas for yourself, you can even get an idea of what research methods you can use and a wide variety of other information. By introducing early undergraduates to the pleasures of ethnography, i think we showcase anthropology’s strong suit, but more importantly, i think it is a great way to scaffold them into ways of writing and reading that will serve them well in both the social sciences and the humanities. In this second post, i share the steps i go through to squeeze an ethnographic experience into what are admittedly short, one term courses 12 weeks. I would love to hear from others who experiment with hands on approaches in sociocultural and linguistic anthropology.

Good Places to Write a Descriptive Essay On

Here are my five steps: sending students out into the world is less institutionally daunting than it may seem. Course theme and coincidence largely guide my choice as to how to structure where students will do their observations. I generally choose public spaces as the ethics approval for these activities is fairly straightforward. I have sent all my students to the same place and have let them choose their own both ways work. In linguistic anthropology i have them choose a community of practice which is pretty wide open and can mean anything from drag queens to gym rats. In a third year politics of indigeneity course, i had students watch patrons pass through or not the aboriginal canadian exhibit at the royal ontario museum.

This challenges them not to leap to a criticism of the exhibit, but to attend to what happens through it. Gather and narrow once the students find a there to be at, i ask them to take field notes. I keep the instructions simple: jot notes in the field, expand notes immediately after, and write a paragraph on what they make of things. My preference is to have students read thematic content, and so i accept that the exercise of writing an ethnographic paper for early undergraduates is an incomplete introduction to fieldwork. Instead of readings, i show them student samples i find online from similar courses and i share my own field notes.

Reading my notes out loud lets students see that while some observations seem like they aren’t about anything. Usually this means listing demographic facts in the hopes of sounding thorough or scientific. Because i send them out without a firm topic, i warn them that they will feel that their notes are about nothing. First time ethnographic papers feel a bit like grabbing a rabbit out of a hat there is some degree of hocus pocus involved. After one or two visits, depending on the course, there is enough to get us to the next stage which is narrowing to a topic/theme the rabbit. I admit this piece is much easier in smaller courses where you can meet one on one with students.

Mrs Dalloway Suggested Essay Topics

The hardest part is getting them to see their field site as a window into a debate, and not an exploration of the site for itself. Once i see the themes of the papers emerge, i group students into research communities. If in lecture i ask them to get together to talk or work through a concept or the readings, i ask them to do it in their research communities so that they are dialoguing new information with, and through, their own work/topics. Their final reading s are tailored to their interests, using broad themes like religion, sports, work, gender/sexuality, food, the body, etc. The requirement for the final assignment is to put their field materials into conversation with the targeted reading, and any others from the course.

I almost always have them do multiple visits 2 3 because it usually opens up their observation skills and brings in richer data. To get them into the flavor and feel of ethnographic writing, i start one or two classes with free writing exercises geared at getting them to find their voice, or the story they are going to tell. Kirin narayan’s book alive in the writing has great prompts adaptable to student projects.

I do these exercises along with them so they can see that thoughts wander and some pieces will be good, while others need work lots of work. A full blown paper may not always be the best way to assess what they have learned. I let them bring in a single page of notes and leave it up to them to decide whether that page has raw or cooked data thanks laura!. This spares them writing an exam separate from a paper, and provides mental relief for me, too. In a compressed summer course in women and gender studies, where the anthropological approach is new to many students, i elected to have them write extended essay proposals in lieu of papers. when it works i have many students who don’t feel entitled to participate in academic debates. Ethnography allows them to enter these debates by starting from a place they feel comfortable their everyday worlds.

Nsf Essay Writing

Gradually, they learn that theory has to be accountable to the everyday and they start to see themselves as capable interlocutors. My motivation for organizing courses around mini ethnographic papers is also partly selfish. The papers aren’t rehearsals of what i have told them in class and always have at least a good anecdote or two. Maybe more importantly, this style of paper asks students to think of themselves as writers/observers and this changes how they approach readings. Not only are they attending to content and argument, but also style and narrative. They start asking how these realms might relate and that’s when things get interesting.

Sometimes these assignments lay the foundation for an interest in graduate work or more research oriented courses. Last year, diana was one of ten young women in my linguistic anthropology course who was looking at service workers as a community of practice. Then as the course progressed and they were introduced to different ideas about language things started to shift.

They saw talk as work and began to describe tensions between scripts managers wanted them to use and notions of forging genuine connections to clients in order to make sales. She zoomed in on newly instituted headsets she and other employees had to wear while working. She observed how conventions of conversation were jeopardized by interruptions over the headset, which clients could often hear. About four months after the course ended, i received this email from her: im not too sure if you remember who i am i know you have a lot of students , but im the girl who wrote about her retail job sirens from your ant206 class. Im the one that had all the horrible stories about my workplace and the surveillance that were put under headsets.