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Optional: More Memes Scholarship

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Many of you wrote in your responses and reflections that you particularly liked the analysis of memes that we read in Unit 1. I was looking up “lifespan of a meme” tonight (for a book chapter I’m writing about online bisexual culture), and found this much longer/more detailed analysis of memes: https://baec.aua.am/files/2018/11/Noubar_Ounjian_Analysis-and-the-Elements-of-the-Lifespan-of-Memes-from-the-scope-of-Semiotics-and-Darwinian-Theory_Capstone.pdf

If you’re interested in linguistics and semiotic theory, take a skim through the text, but if not, it’s worth a scroll-through just to see the screenshots of a bunch of good memes that are included and some interesting charts on the different memes’ popularity over time. This was written as somebody’s senior thesis for an English and Communications degree.

Optional: Example of Misleading Graph

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In thinking about our discussions on misleading science, I wanted to share with you this graph I came across today while reading about Biden’s proposed budget for 2022.

This makes it look like Biden wants to invest a ton of money into education, commerce, health and human services, and the EPA, right? Certainly things that many Democrats support.

However, what these actual bars and percentages represent is not what PROPORTION of the budget Biden wants to invest into these things– he’s not proposing that 40% of all federal discretionary spending go to education.

As the label says, it’s “2021 enacted discretionary spending budget vs. Biden’s 2022 proposal.” So, what these actually show is how much Biden wants to increase these areas COMPARED TO the current year. It doesn’t tell us anything about how much is actually being spent in each area.

For example, the 2021 “enacted budget” (so, not what Trump proposed for this year, but what actually happened for this year) for education was $73 billion, and Biden’s proposal for 2022 is $102.8 billion– the 40% increase in the chart. However, these numbers are just on a different scale than the Pentagon budget– which is a very small bar in the chart. The 2021 budget for THAT is $703.7 billion, and Biden’s proposal is $715 billion.

So, Biden’s proposed budget for military spending looks very small in the chart (1.6%), but it’s only small in relation to this year– the total amount of spending is still very high, and still 7 times higher than education spending.

So, it’s not FAKE/LIES, the chart is saying TRUE information, but it does send particular messages that obscure other facts!

Week 11 (4/13 & 4/15): Observations and Fieldwork!

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Stuff To Do/Look At:

  1. Click here for an overview of the whole unit.
  2. Click here to sign up for your Unit 3 grading plan. 
  3. Sign up for Peer Review!

Everyone on the Structure & Accountability Plan is required to sign up for peer review. Everyone on the Flexibility Plan is welcome to sign up for peer review if you would like to participate.
Even if you do not sign up for peer review, you are welcome to send me an early draft if you would like my feedback.

What To Do Before Zoom Class (Tuesday 4/13)

Assignments (Structure & Accountability Plan):

  • Practice mini-ethnography (3 pages on an aspect of Nacireman culture, modeled after “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” and “The Nacirema Revisited”)

Readings:

Choose 2 of the examples from professional anthropologists (#1-3) and 2 of the examples from the student anthropologists (#4-7). No annotations are required for this unit, but if you found them helpful in the past, I suggest you do them here too just for yourself. 🙂 

  1. Unarmed Militancy: Tactical Victories, Subjectivity, and Legitimacy in Bolivian Street Protest (professional anthropologist)
  2. Using and Refusing the Law: Indigenous Struggles and Legal Strategies after Neoliberal Multiculturalism (professional anthropologist)
  3. VITAL TOPICS FORUM Chronic Disaster: Reimagining Noncommunicable Chronic Disease (a collection of several shorter pieces by professional anthropologists)
  4. Smile and Style: An Ethnographic Analysis of ISU’s Gamma Phi Circus (recent student ethnography of a college club)
  5. Building Christ-based Relationships, Disciples, and Sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ at Illinois State University (recent student ethnography of a college club)
  6. Who Needs a Man When You’ve Got a Gun? (student ethnography of women gun owners in the Midwest)

  7. From ‘Taroosh’ to ‘Tom Jones’: Mediating ‘Local’ and ‘Global’ Queer Discourses through Filipino ‘Gay Lingo’ (student ethnography of the slang of gay Filipinos)

More student examples here, if you want to see more.

Some things to think about while you read:

  1. How do these articles differ from the natural science articles in style, structure, and/or content?
  2. From looking at these examples, how would you define the rules of writing a mini-ethnography?

What We’ll Do During Class

  • Discuss genre/form of ethnographic writing
  • Brainstorm for projects
  • Share-out ideas

What To Do For Async Thursday (4/15)

Readings: None!

Assignments: Field notes (either real or imaginary) for your project. Officially, these are due “today,” but please do your fieldwork anytime during this week that is convenient for you.

You can view an example of student field notes here, or look at the first couple pages of this student’s project from last semester, since he included his fieldnotes in the same file as his project.

Instructions for Fieldwork/Field Notes  (Copy/Pasted from Unit 3 Project Instructions)

For this assignment, you will conduct a mini-ethnography of EITHER an imaginary world OR a real life place.

If you choose a real life place, it should be somewhere you either already spend time in or are comfortable visiting in light of the pandemic. Some suggestions: your own home, your workplace, a partner’s home or a friend’s home, a local park, a place in your neighborhood with a lot of foot traffic/people hanging out, or a nearby restaurant with safety precautions you feel comfortable with.

If you choose an imaginary place, it can be within the same imaginary world you’ve already been writing about this semester (examples from last semester: Hogwarts, Bikini Bottom, the Southern Water Tribe, Riverdale, Justice League Headquarters), or you can choose a different one.

Doing Your Fieldwork

  1. Spend 1-2 hours at/in your location. If you choose an imaginary world, that means reading the book or watching the TV show or playing the video game, etc. If you choose a real life location, behave how you would normally behave in that place. It’s okay if you let people know that you’re doing a project. In fact, you might want to! Then, you can ask people questions about what they’re doing and why (or imagine that you are interviewing an imaginary character). People you interview during ethnographic research are called “informants.”
  2. Whenever you’re able to, write down notes about what you observe. Try to view the situation from an outsider’s perspective—as if you are a totally new visitor who knows nothing about the place or how things work there. What social norms are there? How do people interact with each other, or choose who to interact with? How are people dressed? How do they talk? What do they do? What kinds of people are there? What do you guess/infer about them based on your observations? (If you find yourself using stereotypes, you can just be honest that you were using stereotypes). These notes are part 1 of your fieldnotes.
  3. After you’re done with your fieldwork, write down everything you can think of that you observed that you didn’t already write down. Try to use all 5 senses (or imagine all 5 senses if you’re doing something imaginary). These notes are part 2 of your fieldnotes– all of the details that you couldn’t write down in the moment. You can also include notes on your initial impressions/interpretations.
  4. Look at your notes. What seems to be important features of the norms and culture of the place/community you studied? If you were from Mars and visiting this place for the first time, what would stand out to you? How would you describe it to someone else? What seemed important? Your answers should form the basis of the focus of your mini-ethnography.

Rubric for Field Notes:

1 point — you turn something in, but the notes are very sparse/vague/general
2 points — your fieldnotes indicate an attempt to fulfill the assignment but are missing significant parts of the requirements
3 points– both sets of fieldnotes– notes you take during your observation period and the more detailed version you write after– are present.
4 points– both sets of fieldnotes are present and include observations of several different aspects of your environment/its culture
5 points–both sets of fieldnotes are present and include observations of several different aspects of your environment/its culture with a high level of detail

Preparing for Next Class (Tuesday 4/20)

We will NOT have Zoom class on 4/20.

Readings (Optional):

More examples of student ethnographies

An example from one of my students last semester– now, this is much more in-depth than what I am requiring you to do, since she used her entire time in the US Army as her fieldwork, rather than conducting new fieldwork for this unit. So, her project and analysis are much deeper than yours needs to be. But, it’s also an excellent example of ethnographic writing and analysis.

Another example from last semester — this student chose to do an ethnography of a restaurant he and his friends went to eat at

Assignments Due (Structure & Accountability Plan, AND anyone else who signs up for peer review):

First draft of mini-ethnography due! Please send to me AND to your peer review partner

Week 10 (4/6 & 4/8): Beginning Unit 3

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Welcome back from spring break!

Click here for an overview of the whole unit.

Click here to sign up for your Unit 3 grading plan. 

What To Do Before Zoom Class Tuesday 4/6

Readings:

  1. Digital lecture on “What is Ethnography?”
  2. Article, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” (your first example of ethnographic writing)

Assignments:

  1. Turn in your revised Unit 2 project if you haven’t already done so!
  2. There will also be a discussion prompt due after class. Nothing you need to do for this in advance!

What We’ll Do During Class

  • Talk about the readings
  • Writing activity in breakout rooms

What To Do for Async Thursday, 4/8

Readings:

Assignments Due:

  • Practice mini-ethnography (due for Structure & Accountability Plan folks only). I’ll talk more about this during class on Tuesday, but basically you’ll be writing your own version of “The Nacirema Revisited.”

Preparing for Next Class (Tuesday 4/13)

Readings:

Choose 2 of the examples from professional anthropologists (#1-3) and 2 of the examples from the student anthropologists (#4-7). No annotations are required for this unit, but if you found them helpful in the past, I suggest you do them here too just for yourself. 🙂 

  1. Unarmed Militancy: Tactical Victories, Subjectivity, and Legitimacy in Bolivian Street Protest (professional anthropologist)
  2. Using and Refusing the Law: Indigenous Struggles and Legal Strategies after Neoliberal Multiculturalism (professional anthropologist)
  3. VITAL TOPICS FORUM Chronic Disaster: Reimagining Noncommunicable Chronic Disease (a collection of several shorter pieces by professional anthropologists)
  4. Smile and Style: An Ethnographic Analysis of ISU’s Gamma Phi Circus (recent student ethnography of a college club)
  5. Building Christ-based Relationships, Disciples, and Sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ at Illinois State University (recent student ethnography of a college club)
  6. Who Needs a Man When You’ve Got a Gun? (student ethnography of women gun owners in the Midwest)

  7. From ‘Taroosh’ to ‘Tom Jones’: Mediating ‘Local’ and ‘Global’ Queer Discourses through Filipino ‘Gay Lingo’ (student ethnography of the slang of gay Filipinos)

More student examples here, if you want to see more.

Some things to think about while you read:

  1. How do these articles differ from the natural science articles in style, structure, and/or content?
  2. From looking at these examples, how would you define the rules of writing a mini-ethnography?

No assignments due! 

Digital Lecture: What is Ethnography?

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Ethnography has two root words: ethno, and graph. Ethno means “race, culture, or people” — like in the sense of an ethnicity. Graph means “write” — telegraph, graphite, graphic, photography, phonograph, monograph, etc. So, ethnography literally means writing a culture.

Historically, ethnography is the primary genre used by anthropologists — scientists who study humanity as a whole. Biological anthropologists study human evolution and our physical bodies, cultural anthropologists study our cultures, linguistic anthropologists study our languages, and archaeologists study the belongings, buildings, and trash we leave behind.

“Ethnographic writing” refers to writing that may not be “an ethnography” but uses a similar approach. Ethnographic writing can appear in a variety of academic disciplines– education research, sociology, psychology, English, geography, history, and more.

Brief Anthropology History Lesson

The history of anthropology — like pretty much every area of study — is pretty interwoven with racism. Biological anthropologists (along with medical doctors) are responsible for some of the beliefs that people of different races are better or worse physically, or that their bodies make them better or worse mentally or emotionally. Anthropological research was used as a justification for a lot of horrible things.

Anthropology as its own discipline started in the 1800s, although people wrote “ethnographic” notes long before that. For example, Julius Caesar (Roman Emperor who lived in the B.C. era) wrote some ethnographic notes about the Gauls and other “barbarians” he met while conquering parts of Europe as a general.

So, cultural anthropology, the subfield that solidified what “ethnography” means in the modern sense, mostly took this form in the 1800s:

  1. An economically privileged white man (maybe not rich, but certainly with financial advantages in life), originally from Europe but later also from the U.S., would travel somewhere “exotic” to find some people who aren’t part of European/Western culture.
  2. He would live with them and talk to them and do stuff with them for a year or so, studying them and taking notes.
  3. Then he would go home and write a book describing their culture. They became “his” people, and other anthropologists would have to go find someone else to study.

You might already be able to think of some of the ethical problems with this. Anthropologists often did not ask permission to come study people, or give much back to the community they were staying with. Even though anthropologists try to understand other people’s way of life from their own perspective, they often failed, either by accident or because they were judgy and thought Western culture was superior. They often took things back with them, to sell or donate to museums. Sometimes they tried to impose their own ways of life upon the people they were studying.

So, a lot of it wasn’t good. At the same time, the discipline of anthropology has accumulated a lot of information about the very diverse cultures of humanity, which means there’s a lot of data on how what Western culture considers “just human nature” or “the normal way to do things” is not normal or human nature at all. For example, the first ethnography to go mainstream (as opposed to just being read by other anthropologists) was Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead (1928). People in the U.S. were really interested in this ethnography because Samoan teenagers didn’t exhibit many of the behaviors or moods associated with “just part of being a teenager.” They fought with their parents a lot less, for example, and seemed happy overall, as opposed to the stereotypical moodiness of American teenagers. Mead thought that this was because Samoan teenagers (at the time, at least) had a lot more freedom and trust than American teenagers, especially in the 1920s. It wasn’t controversial for them to have sex with each other. If they didn’t want to live with their parents, it wasn’t a big deal for them to go stay with a friend or another family member for awhile.

Modern Anthropology

While there are still plenty of ethical issues in the discipline of anthropology and in the genre of ethnography, anthropologists are by and large trying to recognize the racist and sexist histories of the discipline and reinvent their research practices.

Some key changes:

  1. Many more anthropologists study parts of their own cultures. There are now lots of ethnographies of different aspects of mainstream U.S. culture. Usually, ethnographies no longer try to describe all of an entire culture, but will instead focus on a key area (like a particular town) or group of people. For example, the punk scene.
  2. The discipline is more diverse — it’s not just white European and American men studying everyone else (although there is definitely a lot of improvement still to be made here).
  3. Many anthropologists practice applied anthropology— that is, using anthropological methods to try to figure out how to help a community. (An example might be an anthropologist going somewhere where the opioid epidemic is really bad to talk to people and figure out what aspects of their life situations lead them to getting addicted to opioids and what other factors are contributing to their struggles.) Applied anthropology is often used to craft public service announcements or promoting other public health initiatives. For example, how can you convince _____ group of people to use condoms, if they don’t want to use condoms?  I think a good use for an anthropologist right now could be, “For people who don’t want to take coronavirus precautions like masks and social-distancing, why not, and what would convince them to do it?”
  4. Many anthropologists work or volunteer at the place/with the people they are studying, as a way of being helpful and giving back to the community instead of just taking up time and knowledge and resources. For example, when David Valentine was researching the lives of trans people in downtown Manhattan in the 1990s, he was also working at the LGBT Center to help provide people with medical resources. Working at the LGBT Center gave him additional opportunities to meet and talk to people, but he was also making a positive impact.
  5. Many anthropologists do collaborative research, where instead of just showing up and doing a study, they work together with members of the community. The anthropologist might ask, “What kind of research would you like to do?” or “What information would you find it useful to have?” Sometimes this takes the form of oral history collections to preserve a community’s stories and lives, or language preservation, in cases when only a few people in a community still speak an ancestral language, so the language is at risk of dying out.

Back to Ethnography

So, just as the discipline of anthropology has a gross history but is evolving, so does the genre of ethnography. One issue with ethnography is that it is originally a scientific genre, with all the claims to “objective truth” that come with it. Another issue is that word choice and the author’s perspective can embed a lot of bias (usually negative) into the writing. The anthropologist may not even realize they’re doing it.

One important change in ethnography is that now it’s much more common for anthropologists to talk about themselves, and explain their relationship to the people they’re writing about and their own position in society, and to reflect on how that might affect their perspective. Whereas an anthropologist back in the day might try to “fade into the background” of his ethnography and pretend he was just an invisible camera watching the people, a modern anthropologist might talk about who she is, her own emotional reactions to her experiences and what she thought about it. You can never fully escape your own bias, but by trying to be as honest and transparent about it as you can, you can help the reader to put the information in context.

Many college classes have “mini-ethnography” assignments. When I was in college, we all had to go to a restaurant near campus and conduct a mini-ethnography of the restaurant. We had to sit there for about an hour, eat some food, and observe everything that happened around us. What kinds of people came in? What kinds of things did they order? How did they interact with the employees? What was the vibe? Then, we went home and wrote about it.

So, the general process for an ethnography is:

  1. Go to your “place” (place is in quotation marks because you could also do an ethnography of an internet community) and spend some time there. Observe how people act and interact, and what kinds of people are there. This is called your fieldwork.
  2. Take notes on your observations, but don’t be weird about it
  3. As soon as possible after your fieldwork, write down everything you remember noticing in as much detail as you can. These are your fieldnotes.
  4. Write an article describing your findings.

An ethnography will often follow the same general form as a scientific article, but it’s less strict. You can say “I” and talk about yourself. You should still talk about your research methods, your results, and do a discussion of your results, but these sections can be mixed together more if you want. You should still try to be thorough, as objective as possible, and always back up your ideas with evidence. You should definitely write about any expectations you had that were wrong, or times when you had to revise your interpretation or opinion.  More on this in the assignment instructions!

Weeks 8 & 9 (3/23, 3/25, and Spring Break): Natural Science Writing Cont.

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Welcome to the last stretch of Unit 2. We’re officially halfway through the semester! Click here for a full unit overview. This week, we’ll be revising our drafts based on peer feedback.

No Zoom Class on Tuesday, 3/23. 

What To Do for Async Tuesday, 3/23

  • If you have signed up for peer review, please give feedback to your partner by the end of the day, and also turn in the feedback to me (either via Blackboard or via email) so that I can give you credit for it.
  • If you are not participating in peer review, just keep working on your paper!
  • For everyone: LMK if you want to schedule a time to meet and talk about your writing.
  • The link and password to the Zoom recording of the APA lesson is in your email. I don’t want to post the password here since the site is open to the public– email me if you have trouble finding it.

Optional: Read excerpts from “Genre and the Experimental Article” — it’s an analysis of the kind of writing we’re doing!  Click here to view the PDF.

What To Do for Async Thursday, 3/25

Assignments Due (Everyone):

Unit 2/Midterm Reflection! Instructions here. 

Ongoing Work (Everyone):

Continue working on/revising your Unit 2 projects. LMK if you want to schedule a time to meet and talk about your writing.

Suggested (But Optional) Revision Exercises:

As you’re revising, you might know you want to change some more things but not know where to begin. I strongly recommend grading yourself using the real rubric to help you identify what areas you want to work on.

You can also compare your paper to some of the examples we’ve looked at.

If you want to, you and your peer review partner could decide to give each other a second round of comments. 

Or, you could schedule a digital appointment at the writing center.

Spring Break (3/24-4/4)

The final draft of your Unit 2 project is due on Tuesday, 4/6, our first day back after spring break. However, if I were you, I would try to turn it in before spring break so that you can, you know, actually take a break and not worry about it.

There are two readings due before class on 4/6 as well, but it’s no more than a normal class day’s worth of work, and is designed for you to do Monday night, rather than over your break. That stuff will be the start of Unit 3, so I’ll write about it in a separate post.

 

Unit 2 Reflection Instructions

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The Unit 2/Midterm Reflection is due for everyone on Thursday, 3/25.

You can answer these questions 1 by 1 like a worksheet, or write out your reflection in paragraph form.

  1. What do you feel like you learned this unit that you didn’t know before?
  2. What did you already know , but now understand better or learned more about?
  3. What (if anything) do you feel like I wanted you to learn, but you still aren’t sure about?
  4. What are the strengths of your final project article? What are you most proud of?
  5. If you were to revise your final project article, what would you want to do differently?
  6. How would you describe or rate your participation/engagement in this unit?
  7. What did you do this unit that helped make you successful?
  8. What (if anything) do you want to do differently in the next unit?
  9. Please complete the sentence: “This class would be better if……”
  10. For you, how did this unit compare to the Humanities Unit? Do you have any suggestions for when I revise for future semesters?
  11. Now that we have 2 units completed (or almost completed), what do you think about the system of different grading plans? Should I continue this system in future semesters? Why or why not?

The unit reflection will be graded out of 5 points.

0 points: You didn’t turn in a reflection.
1 point: You turn in something that does reflect on the unit at least a little
2 points: You address at least half of the questions in your reflection
3 points: You address most of the questions in your reflection
4 points: You answer all of the questions in your reflection
5 points: You answer all of the questions using specific examples

Week 7 (3/16 and 3/18): Natural Science Writing

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This week, we will continue talking about the genre norms and expectations for writing in the natural sciences and practice giving constructive feedback to one another. Click here for an overview of Unit 2.

3 Quick Things First:

  1. If you want to receive notifications of announcements and reminders not via email, click here to sign up for the class Remind group.This is fully optional.
  2. If you haven’t done so already, please fill out this Google Form to choose a grading option for Unit 2. As of when I’m writing this, 23/27 of you have already filled it out.
  3. This Tuesday (3/16), another English professor will be joining us in Zoom class to do my teaching observation. Please don’t be nervous– he’s there to evaluate me, not you– but also please make an extra effort to be prepared and participate. 🙂

Preparing for Tuesday (3/16)

Readings Due:

“Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lammot

Assignments Due (Required for Structure & Accountability Folks, Recommended for Everyone):

  1. Write a first draft of your imaginary article! Have your draft ready by class time so we can discuss them together. Instructions & Rubric Here
  2. Fill out the Unit 2 Peer Review Survey

Even if you don’t have a draft ready by Tuesday morning, I encourage you to come to class anyway! It’ll still be beneficial to participate in discussion, and you can look at some classmates’ papers for inspiration for your own.

What We’ll Do In Class Tuesday

  • Discuss your observations/annotations about the genre features of academic natural science writing
  • Talk about your writing processes (and take a DEEP BREATH)
  • Discuss questions and sticky places that you encountered while writing
  • Go over the plan for the coming weeks
  • If we have time, go into breakout rooms to write and/or give feedback

Things To Do On Async Thursday (3/18)

“Readings”:

***These videos are from last semester, so some things I say might be outdated/related only to last semester.***

 

Assignments/Activities:

Optional: Read More Examples of Imaginary Science Articles

Preparing for Tuesday (3/23)

Next Tuesday, 3/23, we will NOT have synchronous Zoom class. Please just keep working on your papers! If you would like to talk about your paper, please email me so we can set up a time to meet! I’m more than happy to do individual conferences with you.