MindMapping: themes, tensions, focal points, questions

One of your assignments this week is to create a MindMap to present to the rest of us in class on Thursday (please note that we are your audience, and that this is a text that needs to be created with an audience in mind!). Your MindMap is to be centered on your fieldsite or a focal point at your fieldsite (OR a prevalent theme or topic you're gravitating toward exploring). The purpose of the MindMap is to create a visual representation of your thinking and your findings vis a vis your fieldstudy. It is a natural scholarly progression from the work we've been doing, namely, collecting preliminary data, examining our own subjectivities, and searching the literature. Think of your MindMap as a work-in-progress, something you'll need to add "branches" to over the course of the next few weeks, especially after conducting your interviews, but also something that you can create now as a map of where your thinking is and where you'd like it to go, a map of the COMPLEXITY of the issues you're exploring.

After watching this video (don't fall asleep!), please don't mess about with rough drafts, just grab a large sheet of paper or a piece of poster paper and dive in (you can even use a brown paper bag and a sharpie! my favorite! don't spend money!).

Begin with a vision of your subculture or fieldsite--an image that represents what you're exploring--like the clover I drew on the whiteboard in class on Monday to represent Shannon's fieldsite of Sullivan's on Castle Island in South Boston. As it turns out, Shannon's research is taking her into an exploration of the restaurant as an Irish-American "hot spot" for entertainment, good food, recreation, family outings, and political schmoozing. So, I drew a clover. Symbolism...remember that from high school English class? J. Gatsby and the green light? Piggy's glasses from Lord of the Flies? The forest in The Scarlet Letter?

Please think symbolically, iconically, representationally, visually as you create this MindMap.

Your goal should be to create as many relevant branches as possible, leading to as many engaging or surprising or intriguing ideas as you can think of. Please push yourself to use all the tools available to you to make this MindMap a representation of what your fine brain--with its use of digital tools and analysis of data-- is capable of.

• What is interesting to you here (in your fieldstudy)? 
• What possible avenues can you explore? 
• How many connections can you make? 

[have fun! use colors! use images!]
[make it presentable and understandable to an audience!]

1. When your MindMap is complete and ready for class on Thursday, take a photo of it and upload it to your fieldworking blog, so that you have a snapshot of your thinking for safe keeping there and so that your international audience can stay up-to-date on the latest developments in your study. 
2. See you in class on Thursday for your MindMap presentations (and other stuff, too!).
3. Please bring your Fieldworking texts to class on Thursday, Nov 7

'Humans of New York': a photoblog about life, empathy, and one person at a time

Another bit of inspiration for your fieldstudies, folks. Pay special attention to how this photographer discusses his "technique," how he approaches people, asks them for their participation, and listens to their stories in an attempt to capture "their essence" in his photo and brief caption. Also, check out his Facebook page! It is amazing!

'Humans of New York': Photog Gone Viral | Video - ABC News

Blogging About Fieldwork

For this week's blog response, I would like you to think about the work of a fieldworker and how a person doing research in the field communicates his/her findings to an audience. 

Part of our responsibility as researchers and writers (and as intellectual thinker people!) is to publish and distribute our discoveries. One of the ways we are going to practice doing this, in FYW100, is through blogging. 

The purpose of your own fieldworking blog will be to communicate to us and to everyone else in the connected worl, on a weekly basis, the progress of your fieldwork, from making initial contact to wrapping things up in December. You will write your posts as a kind of "memo" each week, updating us on what you accomplished since last week, what new photos you took or interviews you conducted, what fun facts you learned about your site or what neat experience from there illuminated a theme, motif or tension. Your blog will be a vessel for collecting your data and your thoughts about your experiences as a fieldworker. The writing you collect there will be so helpful to you as you move forward to write your final fieldstudy. 

In preparation for this, I am asking you this week (in addition to creating your blog!) to visit the blogs below and to peruse the writings of a diverse range of fieldworkers. Note that many different disciplines are represented here, as are various interpretations of "fieldwork." Also, each fieldworker approaches his/her blog in a slightly different way, so try to pay attention to their content and design. Note who the author is and what they tell you about themselves. Note the background pattern and whether it reflects a thematic tone or pattern relative to the blog’s purpose. Note the content of the most recent posts and the numbers of comments and/or followers. Note the style, tone and vocabulary of the author’s writing, the presence or absence of hyperlinks and video to illustrate main points, the complexity or simplicity of the writing and consider "who is the intended audience?"

Once you’ve thoroughly checked out the blogs and made a few response notes about what engaged you, what was off-putting (and why!), and what intrigued you, please leave 400-500 word post here in which you address: 

(1) what you noticed about the nature of fieldwork (the actual work out in the field), 

(2) what you noticed about how fieldwork was represented (written about, displayed) on these blogs, and 

(3) what's at the forefront of your mind as you think about your own choice of a fieldsite and/or writing publicly about your fieldwork. 

Publish your comments by 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 6.

Science in Svalbard and the Adventures of Fjord:

www.notrudolph.blogspot.com

Notes From The Field:

uwtfieldwork.blogspot.com

New York Times Scientist at Work:

scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com

Lawn Chair Anthropology:

lawnchairanthropology.blogspot.com/2013/05/kazakhstan-paleolithic-fieldwork.html

Anthropological Fieldwork-LB's Blog:

lbanthropology.wordpress.com

Anthropology Fieldnotes:

sites.udel.edu/fieldnotes/2011/03

Anthropological fieldwork in Beirut:

allbranwen.wordpress.com/category/anthropology

The Anthropology of Tibetan Buddhism:

fieldwork-on-tibetan-buddhism.blogspot.com/2010/11/he-garchen-rinpoches-2nd-lecture-on.html#more

Jon Hentik in Ifugao:

www.antropologi.info/blog/jonhenrik/2007/chasing_ifugao_christians_with_a_lack_of_1

Young @ Heart Chorus

First, I need you to know that the Young at Heart chorus will be performing in Northampton, MA--a mere 90 minutes away--on Saturday, Nov 2. Who's down for a field trip?

This is from the Young at Heart website:
Saturday, November 2, 2013 @ 8PM

Survival Center Benefit @ Academy of Music Theatre

274 Main St, Northampton, MA 01060

Tickets coming soon

Second, lets talk about the documentary. It gets me every time! And, it's a great example of a well-rounded field study. What made it so effective? What kinds of things did the filmmaker/researcher/writer do to make the presentation of this subculture so engaging? This film is a text, like The Mole People, like "Friday Night at Iowa 80." So, using your fieldworker's lenses and lingo, tell us something about what you took away from "Young @ Heart." How did it help you envision your own study & composition? 

Underground Dwellers, Truckers, and the Homeless

Now that you're nearly on your way with your fieldworking project, it's prudent to look at your three fieldworking "mentor texts"--The Mole People, Friday Night at Iowa 80, and House for the Homeless--to carefully examine how these researchers (1) framed their research (the WHO, WHERE and the WHY); (2) carried out their research (WHEN & HOW); (3) and found once they synthesized and analyzed their data (WHAT).

For this weekend's blog post, look over the chart I asked you to make for class, where you were to delineate each fieldworker's relationship to their site (subjectivities), methods for data collection, and findings. Also, think about Jennifer Toth's account of her research, especially given what happened to her as a result of her research. Think about how some of the truckers were suspicious of Rick Zollo as he asked what seemed like probing questions. Think about how Ivana Nicolic was inspired by her curiosity to begin volunteering at the homeless shelter.

Each researcher developed a relationship with their site and the people there. Each relationship was different, but nonetheless, this kind of research requires social interaction, bravery, authentic inquiry (to motivate that bravery!), and a personal investment of some sort.

Share with us your reflections on the three researcher's:
1. subjectivities in regard to their site and subculture
2. processes of cultivating participants and collecting information (what sources did you notice?)
3. findings...what assertions is the researcher able to make by the end of the study, based on the data they collected?

WHAT DID YOU NOTICE? I'm most interested in how your posts will differ from one another, so please don't feel like you must deliver to me all the "right" answers wrapped with a tight bow. Share with us your impressions, your takeaways, and whatever stuck out for you (relative to my questions above!) Knowing that you'll be engaging in this same kind of research should bring all sorts of things to the surface for you as you revisit these mentor texts.

Cultivating Your Own Sense of Place

After viewing and listening to Dana Goia's talk, write to us about your "takeaways":

• What did you take away from what he said? What struck you, in particular? 
• Now, think about your own work this semester in light of Goia's talk. What places in your community or local neighborhood might possess stories worth unearthing? What sorts of subcultures and people intrigue you and pique your curiosity? What places do you want to get a better "sense" of? In other words, what are (list them, please) 3-5 potential fieldsites for your research this semester? 
• What is your relationship to these places? What intrigues you about them and what bears researching or finding out? What questions drive your passion for or interest in these places and people? 

Recalling A Sense of Place

The intimate link between landscape and memory comes

through the act of writing and “through the power of observation,

the gifts of eye and ear, of tongue and nose and finger, that a place

first rises up in our mind; afterward, it is memory that carries the place,

that allows it to grow in depth and complexity. For as long as

our records go back, we have held these two things dear: landscape

and memory.” –Barry Lopez “Losing Our Sense of Place”

This week, I am asking you to travel in your memory to a place that is dear to you, a place that conjures

feelings of warmth, comfort, safety, home. In class on Thursday, we made a list and then isolated

one place to describe, taking time to recall vivid sensory details that will help

place our reader in the space, in the feeling of the space, in the essence of the place. 

By Monday, Sept 16, post your Sense of Place piece (300-500 words) on the blog. 

By class time on Thursday, Sept 19, you are to have read and responded to at least

four other peoples' Sense of Place pieces here on the blog. 

I can't wait to read what you write. 

Here is my Sense of Place piece to inspire you (hopefully!): 

When I was growing up, my family's daily conversations, our celebrations, our sadnesses and our strife always coalesced around the dining room table, where food and drink were plentiful and symbolic. When Tevye sings about “tradition!” in Fiddler on the Roof, he is talking about my family, where the methods of mincing the garlic, hand-grinding the pork and kneading the bread with two hands were as important to learn as reading and writing.

Each year, the day after Thanksgiving, my father and I gather ourselves, our tools, and our ingredients in the kitchen of our camp in the deep North woods to make Hungarian stuffed cabbage, a daylong ritual that ends in a feast. We begin with pork loin and ham and at least three whole cabbages. True to fashion, my father is sure to comment about the quality of the meat, claiming each year that the cuts he got from the butcher look even better than the last. As he cuts the meat into chunks small enough to pass through my grandmother’s meat grinder, I begin to feed them into the grinder; he turns the crank and gently peels the excess fat away from the spacer, the worn wooden handle he’s turning revealing the grease of hundred years of this same tradition. When the meat is ground and piled on a cookie sheet at our feet, we scoop it up and put it in a massive bowl into which we also add minced onion, garlic, salt, pepper, three eggs, and a lot of paprika. Though my mother has a Hungarian cookbook that we pretend to consult, my pop and I really measure with our eyeballs and our fingers, throwing in a “touch” of salt or another clove of garlic based on our best guess and on years of making this same dish. Once the filling is made, we need to steam the cabbages and get them ready for peeling.

Each cabbage leaf becomes a new home to a tiny package of savory stuffing spiced with rich, red Eastern European peppers. After I fill the cabbage leaf, I roll the leaf up, like a cigar, fold each of the ends together and push them into the small cabbage parcel, thereby making a seamless roll that’s ready to go in the pot, which is by now lined with sauerkraut and pork bones. As my father steams the cabbages and peels off scalding layer after layer of leaves, I am at my rolling post, filling each leaf with the mixture, stuffing and tucking and stacking them in the large stainless steel pot. My father, a numbers man, loves to keep track of how many I get in a layer and, then, how many we have total. After a day of cooking and anticipating the deliciousness, he will exclaim, “I’ll bet you I can eat 10 this year!” As we revel in our teamwork and accomplishment, with the pot of stuffed cabbage simmering on the stove, we usually have a shot or two of palinka, Hungarian spirits made from fruit. We toast one another and then it’s “down the hatch,” as my pop says. We toast the pot of “pigs,” family and a good life and good food. These are our simple prayers. And, then the feast begins. 

Welcome!

This will be our home away from campus, where we will meet to read, write, interact and explore new texts. Eventually, you will be designing your own Fieldworking blog, where you will collect your data, thoughts, analyses and findings for the world to see and read about. But, for now, please write a short response to this post, once you find your way here, that tells us three intriguing things about YOU. What should we know about you? What would we never guess about you by looking at you? What talent or personality trait are you most proud of? This is your first blogging assignment of the semester, so please remember to consider AUDIENCE and PURPOSE when writing on this blog. Blogging for a college class is a particular rhetorical situation that requires your close attention to these two things. In the spirit of modeling that which I am asking of you, here are three intriguing fun facts about me, Dr. Cook: 1. I play the violin and the mandolin, and music is one of three activities that I engage in that allow me to clear my mind, to forget my worries, to block out the noise of the world and to renew my energy stores. 2. The other two activities are walking in the woods and writing. 3. I love to teach, and I love to teach writing. This is my 19th year as a teacher. Teaching is not a job for me; it's who I am in the world. I am a teacher. I look forward to meeting you all today and to reading your first posts here! Here's to a great semester together.