This was my first class in anything related to Anthropology, and I would say I learned a lot. We started out the class with defining what Anthropology and Ethnography was.
Before I took this class, I'll be honest I had no idea what Ethnography was, but I thought Anthropology was something related to studying how humans interact—that was the peak of my understanding.
So as I navigated through this class, I learned a lot about the logistics of how to conduct ethnographic research, but also how to read ethnography.
In this class, we read 4 books:
Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores de Virtually Human by Tom Boellstorff
The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Diasporic Dreams and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism by Bianca Williams
The Pastoral Clinic. Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande by Angela Garcia
Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship by Aimee Cox
My favorite books would have to be The Pastoral Clinic, Shapeshifters, or The Pursuit of Happiness. I know, too hard to choose. :)
I loved how this class encouraged peer discussion about larger systemic issues beyond the text of the books we read. I loved how we stretched our minds to think about the stories within each ethnography—asking questions, making connections, and realizing it in the world we live in today.
The main theme of this class was possibility outside of society's definition of your identity—the script placed on you. How can we achieve possibility and imagination for our self-actualized identity, escaping the expectations society holds for us based on what we look like? Where we come from?
Attached is my favorite paper I wrote, for my first Ethnographic Reflection based off the first book we read. We were tasked with the assignment to reflect on a place we know well and just observe. Here is a picture of the place I visited:
Attached is the my reflection.
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