Critical Social Inquiry 0299 - Critical Ethnography

Spring
2017
1
4.00
Kimberly Chang
10:30AM-11:50AM TU;10:30AM-11:50AM TH
Hampshire College
322889
Cole Science Center 101;Cole Science Center 101
kacSS@hampshire.edu
Chinese food is more American than apple pie, writes Jennifer Lee in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. In this course, we take Chinese food as a ubiquitous American foodway that is at once both "familiar" and "foreign" and thus offers a potent entry point into the study of cultural identity and citizenship in the U.S. as this intersects with the cultural politics of food justice. Students will carry out an ethnographic research project that begins with a question about Chinese food as it intersects with their own lives. Students will "follow the Chinese food" wherever their questions take them-from home to restaurant to market to farm-and be guided through the process of conducting fieldwork and interviews, grappling with the ethics of participatory research, writing fieldnotes and other forms of ethnographic documentation, and engaging 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. Students who wish to apply to the May 2017 short-term field course in Hefei, China, "Following the Chinese Tea," must take this course as a prerequisite.
Independent Work Multiple Cultural Perspectives Writing and Research Students are expected to spend at least six to eight hours a week of preparation and work outside of class time.
Permission is required for interchange registration during the add/drop period only.