America Abroad

Remember, BRING 5 COPIES OF THE PROJECT PAPER TO THIS CLASS. One is for your seminar leader. One is for you. The other three will go to your partners-in-reading. Each group of four will exchange papers, read them carefully, and meet later in the week to give one another your best advice about how to strengthen the paper. 

Bring coffee or tea for yourself to drink. The faculty will bring muffins, donuts, fruit. You'll get to tell us all something about your work and life during this time away. The new syllabus will also be distributed and the plan for the next five weeks discussed. We look forward to seeing you and the program being together again!

For those of you seeking internship credit through America Abroad, you will need to obtain an evaluation from your field supervisor.  The attachment below outlines college guidelines for completing this evaluation.  Please note however that the guidelines are outdated regarding the form in which the statement is mailed. The college is not using letterhead and snail mail any more. The evaluation should be e-mailed to your faculty sponsor (Sam, Eric, or David).  You do not need to turn your self-evaluation in to your field supervisor; it will be due at the end of Spring term.  In addition, field supervisors do not need to cover all the bases noted in the guidelines. The main thing is for the supervisor to describe the important contributions you made, how well you did, and comment on your character, initiative, readiness for further work in this area, and so forth. 

As you approach the end of fieldwork for America Abroad, you face the challenge of making sense of the documents you have compiled over the past eight or so weeks, whether they are in the form of field notes, interview transcripts, newspaper articles, photographs, video, or memory.  The sense you make of these documents-your interpretations of the patterns of significance you find-will need to be woven into narrative form, of approximately twenty-five pages in length.  What shape that narrative will take is largely of your own choosing.  You may choose to follow the conventions of one of the various disciplinary genres we have encountered through the program, such as anthropology, sociology, journalism, oral history, cultural studies, folklore, philosophy, or fiction.*  Or, you may blur these genres to create a hybrid text that enables a complex expression of your observations, experiences, and interpretations.  What is important is that you find a form of writing that both inspires you to write and addresses the questions at the core of your inquiry.  The paper is not simply an exercise in writing, but is a journey of thought.  It should be used to synthesize your observations, experiences, and recordings in the field into a coherent reflection that you find useful personally, and in relation to wider scholarly or activist goals.

 

A call (below) has been posted for Greeners to submit work to present as part of a conference to take place on campus May 24-5 (Saturday and Sunday, week 8). As you'll see, the focus is right up the alley for our program, and the timing is excellent. Submissions (sent to the e-mail address below) are due by May 1. This is a great chance to share your writing about your research and experiences with a broad audience. Your submission can consist of, or be adapted from, one or more excerpts from your paper. You can also propose presenting together as panels.   

A reminder: Your paper, full-length and well polished, is due at the first program meeting, on Monday, May 5, at 9:30am, when we’ll meet in Sem2 D1105. (If, for any reason, you are unable to attend this class, your seminar leader must receive a copy by e-mail or other means by this time. It’s a true deadline.)

 

Here are the books, with the editions we have ordered, for the second half of spring quarter. The first, DAISY MILLER, needs to be read for seminar on Thursday, May 8 (there won’t be a seminar on May 5).

For all who are in the area and able to attend, you are invited to a seminar on Cosmpolitanism on Thursday, April 3 (that's week 1, spring quarter). It'll be from 9:30-11:30 in Sem2 E2109. We'll talk about the issues raised by Appiah that you find most compelling. The whole book is open for discussion. Come in from the field and catch up with your peers!    

We've been noticing a few patterns in the posting of fieldnotes and book discussion comments.  The first is that some of the postings are a bit long.  Several recent posts, when transferred into a Word document, were almost 26 pages long.  This presents a problem for potential readers, such as your esteemed faculty and peers.  The idea of the posts is to present something short and thoughtful, a brief *selection* of your fieldnotes that contains some analytic insight.  Of course, we recognize that your families may also be reading these notes, so longer narrative commentaries are within reason.  Basically, do what you like, but if you are seeking comments from faculty and peers, aim for the nutshell.  Second, the Cosmopolitanism discussion has consisted mainly of individual independent postings, like reading response papers.  This is fine, but it would be wonderful to have more dialogue.  If you can, try responding to existing posts during the next round of discussion.  Gracias, Khop Khun, Dank U, etc. . .

Given the challenges of internet connectivity from certain places abroad, it has been more difficult to set times for conference calls than anticipated.  Don't worry if we don't get the call in this week.  Next week is also fine.  But please do e-mail me with your availability and your phone number so we can set a time.  And if we do set a time please make an effort to be by your phone, as I make a trip into my office from home to make each call.  So far I've been talking to a lot of voice messaging systems in languages I can't comprehend.  Right now good times are this next week Tuesday (the 25th) from 2-4pm.  For those of you 10-12 hours differently timed we'll have to think of something else.  I'll call out, but my office # is 360-867-6434 for those who need to call in. 

Sam is scheduling half-hour meetings with students on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, March 18-20, from 9am to noon and 1pm to 3pm. Please e-mail him (schrages@evergreen.edu) a range of time when you are available to talk (for example, "Tues or Wed between 1-2"). If you're in the local area, come to the office (Lab2 3273); if elsewhere in the U.S. or abroad, include the phone number where you can be reached and he will call. He'll post the schedule on Sunday night.

Please write a brief response to each of the questions below.  Your responses are required and need to be submitted by March 9th, as we will need them for your winter term eval.  You might use some of what you have already given us in recent field journal reports and post your mid-project review in lieu of your field report for next week.

 

1. Conclusions so far: How have your questions developed and what have you figured out about them?

2. Work done so far: Describe the research you've undertaken so far, give specific examples from your fieldwork and reading.

3. Work to be done: Describe what your plan is to complete the research. Also, include a schedule for fieldwork and writing for the second half of the project.