Optional: More Memes Scholarship

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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!

Leave a reply

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

1 Reply

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! 

Unit 3 Overview (4/6-4/29): Ethnographic Writing

Leave a reply

Scheduling Notes: There is one day during this unit (Tuesday, 4/20) when we would normally have synchronous class, since it is a Tuesday, but instead we will be asynchronous. Please feel free to schedule an appointment with me if you’d like to talk about your writing, though!

Writing in the Social Sciences

What counts as “social science” can be a matter of debate. Generally speaking, I would say it includes sociology, anthropology, human geography, criminology, political science, some psychology, some communications, some linguistics, and more. Based on the info in CUNYFirst, most of you are in social science-related majors.

There are lots of genres within the social sciences. Some might be similar to the academic writing in the humanities and in the natural sciences that we’ve been practicing. In this unit, though, we’ll be focusing on ethnography– more on that later.

Writing For This Unit

Your final project for this unit will be to write a mini-ethnography, either imaginary or based on real fieldwork that you do during this unit. So, you will not be doing online research unless it’s to find background information on your topic. Instead, you will closely study the genre of ethnography and either make up content that matches the genre features (like we did in Unit 2) or write based on your own scientific observations. Don’t worry– we’ll look at some examples of both real articles and imaginary ones.

Grading/Checklist for This Unit

The Social Science/Ethnography Unit as a whole will be worth 20% of your final grade, regardless of which grading plan you choose.

Maximum Flexibility Option Required Assignments/Grading:

  1. Field Notes (due 4/15), 5 points (see rubric)
  2. Mini-Ethnography Final Draft (due 4/29), 10 points (see rubric)
  3. Unit Reflection (due 4/29), 5 points (see rubric)

Because there are only three required assignments for you, I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE you to remain engaged in class/do as many of the readings and non-graded activities as you can. The flexibility grading option is designed to do just that — give you flexibility — but the non-graded elements are designed to facilitate the learning and writing process.

You are also MORE THAN WELCOME to turn in early drafts and participate in peer review– you just won’t be graded on it.

Total: 20 points. Each point is worth 1% of your final grade.

Structure and Accountability Option Required Assignments/Grading:

  1. Discussion Post/After-Class Reflection (due 4/6 after class), 2 points (completion)
  2. Practice Mini-Ethnography (due 4/13)*, 3 points (completion)
  3. Field Notes (due 4/15), 5 points (see rubric)
  4. Mini-Ethnography First Draft (due 4/20), 2 points (completion)
  5. Peer Review (due 4/27)**, 3 points (completion and thoroughness)
  6. Mini-Ethnography Final Draft (due 4/29), 10 points (see rubric)
  7. Unit Reflection (due 4/29), 5 points (see rubric)

*This due date is different than what is listed on the course calendar. Originally, it was due 4/9, but I think it makes more sense to give you the weekend to work on it. 

** On the course calendar, there is also a discussion assignment listed for this day, but I’m canceling that. 

Total: 30 points. Each point is worth 0.67% of your final grade.
**I will input all the math into Blackboard so you don’t have to worry about calculating what this means for you**