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Soo Ah Kwon, Instructor
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Students were encouraged to make their work public so that their research subjects, fellow students and Syracuse community participants, would be able to comment and provide feedback on their research. The IDEALS on-line archive would enable this process to be recorded for future students in the hope that they will build on present student research. The archiving of “scholarship in action” research for ANT 300 may help Syracuse University better understands the learning outcomes of “scholarship in action” initiatives.
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The course also introduced students to ethnographic methods. The bulk of this class was devoted to students’ own ethnographic projects on a Syracuse University “Scholarship in Action” endeavor although it was possible to carry out research on other areas if students presented a good case for doing so. A wide variety of social practices and learning processes were expected to become part of what students researched.
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The Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI) includes several universities and community colleges located in the state of Illinois. All of these schools are public. Syracuse University is the first non-Illinois and first private university to join the group. This class joined an inter-campus learning community in which many classes from several schools (most, however, are located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) explore their universities and colleges ethnographically. In order to explore Syracuse University ethnographically, we needed to think about what “the university” is, what “ethnography” is, and what “scholarship in action” is. Broadly, we explored the university as a composite of prose, numerical, and visual narratives.
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The Ethnography of the University: Studying Scholarship in Action was designed to introduce undergraduate students to ethnographic methodologies, institutional analysis, and the research publication process. Students conducted ethnographic studies of Syracuse University Scholarship in Action projects of their choosing and had the opportunity to produce their results on the web. All the steps in the research process, from the formation of research questions to the creation of final research papers, was produced on-line at a collaborative website, Moodle, that has been created at the University of Illinois to facilitate undergraduate ethnography of the university projects. This project is titled the Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI).
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The objective of this course is to provide students with hands-on training in ethnographic methods and writing and to help students become critical readers of ethnographic research. Instead of attempting to present a whole smorgasbord of research methods or to survey the vast literature on ethnographic fieldwork, we focus on a small selection of techniques that are central to much anthropological fieldwork (field note taking, participant observation, interviewing, mapping) and that are most useful and relevant for students' semester projects. Other techniques and issues are discussed and incorporated as they emerge from students' own research inquiries. Students will not conduct a full-blown research project but instead will get “a taste” of ethnographic research through a series of ethnographic exercises and students' own mini-project. At the end of the semester, students write an ethnographic research report based on their findings and reflections on the research process. This course is affiliated with the EUI and, as a part of this initiative, students are asked to try their hand at ethnographic research about their own institution, Illinois State University.
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The purpose of this class was to provide students with opportunities to engage in a scholarly examination of research and practices associated with museum interpretation to diverse audiences; and to lead in the development and implementation of Krannert Art Museum educational programs and outreach activities with selected local audiences.
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There are three main components to this course: reading, composition, research. Readings focused on issues related to ‘difference’ and higher education, and the composing students did for this class included in-class writing, reading responses, and essays that build toward a research project of students’ choosing. This course drew upon students’ expertise as current U of I students and provided a space for them to ‘inquire into’--to ask questions about—spaces they encounter on a daily basis. Throughout this course, we considered what the university ‘is’ and regarded ‘difference’ as an area of inquiry within the university’s narratives. Another area of concentration was “ethnography,” and students gained practice in the basic skills of ethnographic research—i.e., observation, interviewing, artifact analysis. Such practice was built into various assignments/students’ own research project.
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Under the title of “Writing and Language in the University,” this course centers on two interrelated topics: language, including variations in dialects and registers and the ideologies surrounding those variations; and academic writing, including its many genres and disciplinary differences. As we read, write, and talk about these topics, we explore how writing and language can vary and what makes us consider a way of speaking “standard” or a way of writing are more “correct” or “appropriate” in university contexts than others. We then move on to apply these concepts to our campus by exploring how writing and language are used at UIUC. Each student identifies a specific aspect of writing and/or language at UIUC to focus on for their in-depth research project. They might, for example, look at the range of writing genres used within their major; compare and contrast the academic writing expectations of different teachers, classes, or majors; explore the speech or writing experiences of a particular language or cultural group on campus; or examine current trends in student language use such as texting or slang. In their research, they pull from a wide range of scholarly sources including advanced academic articles and books as well as their own original ethnographic research (interviews, observations, surveys, and/or analyses of University texts). At the close of the course, they not only will have produced a polished final research project, but they will also have the option to share their research with the wider university community through presentation and/or online publication. As part of the EUI (Ethnography of the University Initiative), this class gives them the opportunity to create original scholarly research based on their firsthand experience with people, texts, and places on campus.
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What is a body? Is there such a thing as “the” body? How are bodies produced? What do they represent? Who gets to represent them? In this course we examine bodies in history, in particular cultural contexts, in international and national forums. Readings vary widely to include anthropological, historical, psychological and sociological perspectives. Our assigned projects focused on exercise, health and sport practices in general and on the University of Illinois campus in particular. This course is connected to the Ethnography of the University Initiative.
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When did Muslims arrive in the Americas? What is the history of Muslim immigrants in the United States? This course was an introduction to the study of Muslims in the United States. In examining the multiple racial, cultural, and national groups that make-up this diverse community, students questioned what it means to be Muslim in America. The course began with the first contact between Islam and America in the “Age of Discovery” and the African slave trade to think through the roots of Islam and its role in the contemporary moment. In this moment students also examined how indigenous Americans, referred to as American Indians, are conceptualized in relation to the Muslims of Europe and simultaneously racialized. In historicizing Islam students examined the communities who first arrived as crypto-Muslims to understand the place of Latinos in American Islam. Second, students examined African American Islam in its myriad formations. These two examples were then used comparatively to understand how the historical narrative of African American and Latino Muslims is related to newer immigrant populations. In large part, students surveyed Arab American and South Asian American Muslim communities particularly in urban contexts. These later two populations grew through large immigrant waves in the 19th century and the late twentieth century, particularly after 1965. In addition to the multi-racial and comparative perspective, this course examined intra-religious (sectarian) and interfaith differences and dialogues. This material was explored through an interdisciplinary approach focusing on the scholarship mainly from anthropology, history, sociology, religious studies, and ethnic studies. For many of class discussions this course used Chicago as an ethnographic site to explore the complex make-up and history of Muslim America.
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