ANTH516 - PUBLIC INTEREST WORKSHOP: Public Interest Ethnography

This is an interdisciplinary workshop sponsored by Peggy Reeves Sanday (Dept of Anthropology) with guest speakers from Communication Studies and other fields. Open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students, the workshop is a response to Amy Gutmann's call for interdisciplinary cooperation across the University and to the Dept. of Anthropology's commitment to developing public interest research and practice as a disciplinary theme. The workshop will be run as an open interdisciplinary forum on framing a public interest social science that ties theory and action. Students are encouraged to apply the framing model to a public interest research and action topic of their choice. Examples of public interest topics to be discussed in class and through outside speakers include the meaning of "public interest," the ways in which the public interest is/is not addressed in the academy, and the relationship of studying the public interest to social justice. This is an academically-based-community-service (ABCS) course.