Anthropology 340 - SEM: TOPICS IN ANTHROPOLOGY

Topics course. Anthropological writing must convey the life-worlds of people and the textures of ethnographic encounters and fieldwork, and engage with and refine anthropological theories. How can writing do all of this at once? And as we craft a narrative, what do we leave out? Do we really describe ethnographic "reality" or do we create anthropological fictions? Why then do we look to ethnographic accounts to understand societies and cultures? Anthropological writing has dealt with these questions and more since its inception but most profoundly since the 1980s. In this class, we read pieces that reflect on and innovate with writing as anthropological praxis, the doubts that have riddled it and the larger developments these doubts have engendered around issues of fact versus fiction, representation, narrative style, writing as a form of political action and the creation of knowledge. We also workshop ethnographic writing in class to observe these tensions in our own work, understand them as rites in the creation of anthropological knowledge and work through them to craft anthropological narratives.

Topic: Riting/Righting/Writing. Instructor permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores