Course Overview

Ethnography is the distinctive, signature way of producing knowledge in sociocultural anthropology and increasingly other disciplines such as Sociology, Social Work, even Business. Ethnography has been traditionally devoted to the authoritative social science representation of “distant people,” “people of color” or other objectified marginal population, practiced by white, largely male researchers who have been trained in those very academic institutions where the legacies of racial inequality and discrimination have tended to ensure a pronounced absence of comparably trained researchers from such racially subordinated communities.

In contrast, Ethnic Studies generally and Latinx Studies specifically emerge as historically specific insurgent intellectual formations in the United States. They result from the social and political struggles of racially subordinated groups for elementary democratic civil rights if not anti-assimilationist and avowedly separatist projects of decolonization and national self-determination. Ethnic Studies, generally, and Latinx Studies, specifically, have been distinguished by a forceful intellectual demand for the visibility, recognition, and self-representation of the subjugated or repressed histories and social conditions of communities of color.  As such, the intellectual projects b behind Ethnic Studies was premised upon an explicit critique of the complicity of conventional academic disciplines – anthropology and sociology foremost among them – with hegemonic often white supremacist representations that silenced or pathologized these same communities.

Mindful of this fraught relationship between ethnography and Ethnic studies, again, specifically in this case Latina/o Studies, this course critically intervenes in the important questions of racism, sexism, heteronormativity, immigration, and activism, in relation to ethnography and ultimately the question of decolonization. We will critically explore the theoretical, methodological, and ultimately political implications and questions generated by a range of material on Latinxs, including the ethnographic pulse of works of literature, film, and works written by Latinxs and non-Latin@s. Do the modifiers “Latinx,” “Latina/o” or similar derivative change the agenda, the objects of study,  the researcher’s approaches, methods, and representations?

Course  Objectives

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

  • Analyze anthropology's colonial legacy

  • Develop deep reading practices

  • Explore the possibility of recuperating the discipline

  • Appreciate the contributions of Latinx Studies to Anthropology 

  • Appreciate the contributions of Latinx Anthropologists

Required Texts

There are two required books for this course

Scratching out a living : Latinos, race, and work in the Deep South- Available online through library 

 

Progressive Dystopia :Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San Francisco 

The books are available at the Illini Union Bookstore (IUB) (217-333-2050). Please be sure to order the correct edition and year of publication, if you order them from elsewhere.

Requirements

 

Online Discussions 

You must write seven 300 word discussions of the assigned reading, in which you synthesize the readings of the module. You must post these on the appropriate Discussion Forum and in the appropriate module no later than 10am on the dates they are due. I will occasionally offer prompts to guide your writing on Friday. You should also read your peer’s responses.

 

Late discussions will be accepted at a penalty of 10% per day.

Final Paper

You must write a comprehensive 8 page essay, showing your command of the course materials. It will be due in mid-December. I will post a prompt in mid to late November.

 

Grading

Your grade will be determined according to the following form:

 

7 Online Discussion Postings (300 words) 50% 

Final Paper 50%

 

Extra credit 

I may offer some extra credit possibilities during the semester. They will require remotely attending an event and providing the instructor with a 1 page summary. They will typically be worth only an additional 5% on your lowest grade of an assignment.



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Academic Integrity

By enrolling in this course, you have agreed to comply with the UIUC code on Academic Integrity. Review:

http://www.library.uiuc.edu/learn/faculty/academic_integrity.html

 

Course Schedule 

This course must be completed over 16 weeks. It is your responsibility to keep up.

 

August 24 and 31

Module 1: Ethnography Traditionally

 

Excerpts from Bronislaw Malinowski. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Malinowski Press, 2007  

Brodkin, Karen, Sandra Morgen, and Janis Hutchinson. “Anthropology as White Public Space?” American Anthropologist 113, no. 4 (December 25, 2011): 545–56.

Online Discussion Due September 2










September 7 and 14 

Module 2: Culture of Poverty 

 

Oscar Lewis, “The Culture of Poverty” (1966), 67-80. In Oscar Lewis, Anthropological Essays (1970). https://www.jstor.org/stable/43614445

Oscar Lewis 1966. La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty--San Juan and New York. New York: Random House.      

https://i-share-uiu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CARLI_UIU/q1ojeg/alma99112537412205899

“Methods” 36-52

“The Rios Family” 53-73

Bourgois, Philippe. School days: learning to be a better criminal In search of respect: Selling crack in El Barrio. Vol. 10. Cambridge University Press, 2003

Online Discussion Due September 16

September 21 and 28 

Module 3: Rebirth of Latinx Studies

 

Excerpts from Rosaldo, Renato. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. 2nd ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993

Miguel Díaz Barriga. 1997 “The Culture of Poverty as Relajo.” Aztlan 22, no. 2. (1997): 43-65

Davalos, KarenMary. "Chicana/o Studies and Anthropology: The Dialogue That Never Was." Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 23, no. 2 (1998): 13-45.

Online Discussion Due September 30

October 5 and 12

Module 4: Border and Borderlands

 

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/la Frontera. Vol. 3. aunt lute books San Francisco, 1987.

- Amarela Varela. “Notes for an Anti-Racist Feminism in the Wake of the Migrant 

Caravans.” Edited by Verónica Gago and Marta Malo. The South Atlantic Quarterly 119, no. 3 (July 1, 2020): 655–63.

 

Online Discussion Due October 14

October 19

Module 5: Refusals

 

Rosas, Gilberto. “Witnessing in Brown.” In Ethnographic Refusals-Unruly Latinidades, edited by Alex Chavez and Gina Perez. School of American Research and University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming.

Aparicio, Ana. “Race, Trash Talk, and Dissent in Contemporary Suburbias.” In Ethnographic
Refusals-Unruly Latinidades, edited by Alex Chavez and Gina Perez. School of American
Research and University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming.

Bolivar, Andrea. “Trans Latina Fantasías: Fantasizing Trans Latina Selves, Families, and
Futures.” edited by Alex Chavez and Gina Perez, Ethnographic Refusals – Unruly Latinidades.
School of American Research and University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming.

Online Discussion Due October 21

October 26 

Module 6: What is race?

Watch Race The Power of an Illusion

  • Visweswaran, Kamala. "Race and the Culture of Anthropology." American Anthropologist 100, no. 1 (1998): 70-83.

  • Rosa, Jonathan, and Yarimar Bonilla. 2017. “Deprovincializing Trump, Decolonizing Diversity, and Unsettling Anthropology.” American Ethnologist44 (2): 201–8

Online Discussion Due October 28

November 2,9,16

Module 7: Scratching out a living

Stuesse A. Scratching out a living: Latinos, race, and work in the Deep South. Univ of California Press; 2016

Online Discussion Due November 18



November 23 Break

 

November 30, December 7

Module 8: Progressive Dystopia

 

Shange, Savannah. Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Anti-blackness, and Schooling in San Francisco. Duke University Press, 2019.

Online Discussion Due December 9

 

December 14 Final Assignment Due