Folklore and Folklife - Courses - Spring 2007 - FOLK 543 640 Ethnographic Writing

For more information about Folklore and Folklife,at UPenn, contact Professor Dan Ben-Amos at dbamos@sas.upenn.edu.

For assistance with the Folklore and Folklife website, contact Linda Lee at lindalee@sas.upenn.edu.

FOLK 543 640 Ethnographic Writing
Janet Theophano
Seminar: Wednesday 6:00-8:40 p.m.
Contact: janet.theophano@verizon.net

Ethnographic research has brought anthropologists and folklorist, sociologists and oral historians face to face with some compelling challenges as they describe specific social and cultural groups to a variety of audiences: insiders and outsiders, academics and lay audiences. Attempting to be both scientific and humanistic, ethnography has been accused of being neither. How can ethnographers best understand their impact on the groups they study, and the impact of their research on their own identity? How can ethnographers balance their personal agendas (related for example to political and ideological goals, particularly Feminism and anti-imperialism) with an academic quest to produce "scientific," well-supported research? And how have ethnographers experimented with style and genre to break the chains of traditional ethnographic writing and better represent their experience in the field?

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