We have read a lot about ethnography, but we have not yet collectively read any products of the craft. Drawing on your insights from the previous texts and your own fieldwork, you will examine excerpts from three monographs: Pricing Beauty by Ashley Mears, The New Noir by Orly Clerge, and Stacked Decks by Robin Bartram. While there is a lot that separates these books – including most obviously their empirical objects, theoretical commitments, and ethnographic styles – they all share one important feature: each is based primarily on fieldwork the authors conducted in graduate school. While you should of course read these books critically, my hope is that you also find them to be inspirational. I recommend that you begin each by first reading their methodological appendices.

Thanks to a grant provided by the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Boston College, one of these ethnographers, Bartram, will visit us in-person on April 25th. As part of his visit, Bartram will give a “book talk” that will be open to anyone at the university on April 24th. Unless you are otherwise engaged, you are expected to attend this event in addition to the regularly scheduled class meeting.