Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, Ethnographic Methods and Innovations is an intellectual forum whose goal is to explore all forms of ethnography by bringing together ethnographers from a broad array of disciplines and approaches who are experimenting with the method as a tool for understanding social phenomena.
Given the complexity of said social phenomena and the issue that such complexity presents to researchers, this study group provides a space for the exploration of the limits and usefulness of ethnography as a method for making sense of the world. Drawing on both conventional and innovative conceptualizations of ethnography, the vision of the study group is to provide an interdisciplinary space for the workshopping of various stages of ethnographic research, including the refining of pre-field strategies, multi-modal data collection and analysis, field notes, and diverse methods of representation that extend beyond the textual ethnography.
As a result, with ethnography as a thread, this study group sutures together the creative potential of various academic disciplines including, but not limited to, anthropology, sociology, cinema and media studies, literature, visual arts, performance arts, history, languages, psychology, political science, and history. Participants of the study group can work through their project ideas and research design in a space that is sustained through intercollegiate and interdisciplinary collaborative support.