ETHNOLOGY

Why is fieldwork knowledge different to all other kinds of knowing” Why is fieldwork the sine qua non of Anthropology? Why is it never or rarely taught? Can it be taught? Is it a secret? Why is writing ethnography never or rarely taught? Can it be taught? Is it a secret? Is ethnographic writing thus related to fieldwork as absent presence? And what of the ethnographic diary or notebook in this regard? Is this not as much a book as a book is a book? Students are asked in this course to make an ethnographic notebook that rivals modernist and postmodernist art and literature.

Develop the students' abilities to conduct an ethnographic fieldwork and write notes while on fieldwork.

For my course I am thinking of using the poem by the American poet, William Carlos Williams, called "Patterson." This is a book length poem not so much about Patterson as it is an enactment of that city—an enactment that I wish to think of as ethnography of a place following the rhizomic logic set forth by Deleuze and Guattari in the first chapter of One Thousand Plateaus.
Naturally, the city in our case will be Venice, and as this course is called “The Art of Fieldwork,” each student (and I, myself) is expected to create just such an enactment.

to be defined

written

Reading and writing of ethnographic texts in parallel to the course module.

English

Written