History and Ethnography

Course Objective

This course is designed from an interdisciplinary perspective so that students learn how empirical qualitative methods from social sciences contribute to history and historical research:

1- Learn ethnographic methods (interviewing, observation-participation, visual analysis/photo-elicitation) and their applications in (oral) history.

2- learn the difference between Emic and Etic within knowledge production

3-Aquire storytelling/writing skills by knowledge of past (history) to contemporary.

4- Gain familiarity with interdisciplinarity and decolonial collaborative knowledge production

Course Content

Some historians insist a historian comes to know the past by literally rethinking the ideas of historic figures. Therefore, all history becomes the history of thought (Flynn 1974). Although, social sciences investigate phenomena through methods/methodologies and fieldwork that yield empirical evidence. In other words, social scientists look at phenomena by following perceptions, while historians look through them by rethinking what was perceived.

This course, as a skill-learning course, introduces students to ethnography, its interdisciplinary use, and how ethnography can be included in historians' toolboxes.

Teaching Methods

Twice every week (interactive lectures/seminars)

Individual Expriemnetion [finding archived images/maps/product designs/sounds/smells and connecting them to contemporary issues)

Type of Assessment

Active Participation (10%, this includes attendance and active contribution to class discussion)

Ethnographic Observation and Storytelling via objects (30%)

Visual Essay (30%)

Ethnography of Objects (30%)