Graduate Studies Reports Access
Graduate Course Proposal Form Submission Detail - SPC6214
Tracking Number - 2008
Edit function not enabled for this course.
Current Status:
Approved, Permanent Archive - 2004-03-18
Campus:
Submission Type:
Course Change Information (for course changes only):
Comments:
Detail Information
- Date & Time Submitted: 2003-10-27
- Department: Communication
- College: AS
- Budget Account Number: 1217000
- Contact Person: Gil Rodman
- Phone: 9743025
- Email: grodman@chuma.cas.usf.edu
- Prefix: SPC
- Number: 6214
- Full Title: Ethnography of Communication
- Credit Hours: 3
- Section Type: D -
Discussion (Primarily)
- Is the course title variable?: N
- Is a permit required for registration?: N
- Are the credit hours variable?: N
- Is this course repeatable?:
- If repeatable, how many times?: 0
- Abbreviated Title (30 characters maximum): Ethnography of Communication
- Course Online?: -
- Percentage Online:
- Grading Option:
R - Regular
- Prerequisites: Graduate Standing
- Corequisites:
- Course Description: Explores ethnography as an approach to conducting research and a means of theorizing about human communication.
- Please briefly explain why it is necessary and/or desirable to add this course: This course explores ethnography as both a method for studying and a means for theorizing human communication in interpersonal; organizational; and social, cultural, and political contexts. For the Department of Communication, this course contributes to a
- What is the need or demand for this course? (Indicate if this course is part of a required sequence in the major.) What other programs would this course service? This course will complement existing qualitative methods courses (Qualitative Methods, Narrative Inquiry, Autoethnography, Dialogue, Action Research, Contemporary Cultural Studies, and Texts in Performance).
Students from a variety of disciplines would be interested in this course, including Anthropology and American Studies, Sociology, Women’s Studies, Mass Communication, and Theatre. Any student wishing to understand and practice qualitative methods would benefit from this course.
- Has this course been offered as Selected Topics/Experimental Topics course? If yes, how many times? Yes, at least 2-3 times.
- What qualifications for training and/or experience are necessary to teach this course? (List minimum qualifications for the instructor.) Ph.D. in Communication or closely related field.
- Objectives: to explore how ethnography developed as a research method and the ontological and epistemological commitments of various approaches to ethnographic inquiry
to understand how shifts in theorizing about ethnographic inquiry have created distinctive approaches to ethnographic fieldwork and representations
to consider how students own ethnographic research contributes to current thinking about ethnographic theory, practice, and praxis
- Learning Outcomes: students will read and discuss the history and criticism of ethnographic research as theorized and practiced over time, particularly in response to the interpretive turn in the human disciplines
students will read, discuss, and use ethnographic methods in conducting a research project of their own design
students will create, share and receive feedback on ethnographic texts designed to present their research projects and informed by course readings and discussions; these texts will include a project proposal, fieldnotes, brief writings, and a final paper and project portfolio
students will demonstrate their understanding of course texts by authoring and presenting weekly discussion questions
- Major Topics: Turns, moments, crises and critiques of and in ethnographic theory and practice
Sensemaking in the field
Writing as making sense of fieldwork
Ethnography and cultural critique
Native ethnography, memoir, and autoethnography
Feminist ethnography
Performance ethnography
- Textbooks: James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988, originally published 1941.
Kamala Visweswaran, Fictions of Feminist Ethnography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
D.J. Waldie, Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996
Selected readings (see course syllabus).
- Course Readings, Online Resources, and Other Purchases:
- Student Expectations/Requirements and Grading Policy:
- Assignments, Exams and Tests:
- Attendance Policy:
- Policy on Make-up Work:
- Program This Course Supports:
- Course Concurrence Information:
- if you have questions about any of these fields, please contact chinescobb@grad.usf.edu or joe@grad.usf.edu.