Critical Social Inquiry 0249 - Critical Ethnography

Chinese food is more American than apple pie, suggests writer Jennifer Lee in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. In this course, we will take Chinese food as our starting point for exploring food as a system that connects individuals and communities, locally and globally. Students will carry out a multi-sited ethnographic research project that begins with a question about Chinese food, whether about production and consumption, identity and belonging, health and environment, memory and desire, community and activism. Students will "follow the Chinese food" wherever their questions take them-from restaurant to market to factory to farm-and be guided through the process of posing ethnographic questions, conducting fieldwork and interviews, writing fieldnotes and other forms of ethnographic documentation, and engaging throughout in the critical, reflexive act of interpretation and writing. As part of the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment, students in this course will receive a small research stipend to use during the semester and may apply for a more substantial summer research grant to further their project locally or take it to China.

Independent Work Multiple Cultural Perspectives Writing and Research Students should enter this course with a viable research project in mind and ready to begin fieldwork by the third week. In this course, students are expected to spend 8-10 hours a week of preparation and work outside of class time.