Course Description

Fulfills Upper-Level Elective Requirement for LCS Major and Minor

This course provides an introduction to reading, writing, and theorizing ethnography and applies this knowledge to the analysis and understanding of ethnographic works about and by Latinos in the U.S. Once largely understood as an “objective” form of knowledge production, ethnography today is often conceptualized as stories about the experiences of the ethnographer in relation to other people within a specific cultural context. Questions to be explored: What is the craft of ethnography? What kind of knowledge is ethnography and what are its limits? What social, political, and cultural processes inform the production and consumption of ethnography about Latinos? How are ethnographic texts on Latinos produced, circulated, and authorized within and beyond specific scholarly communities and larger publics? We will take a critical approach to reading and evaluating ethnographic works and apply our acquired skills in the craft of ethnography to specific writing exercises, which will allow us to explore various forms, formats, and styles for “writing Latino culture.”