SJSC 5830 - Storytelling and Narrative in Ethnography

Goals: This course explores how to harness the power of effective storytelling for the strategic benefit of an individual, an organization, and society as a whole. Students will learn to recognize how people’s everyday stories matter, and how these stories can be used to understand social injustice, institutional power, the social dynamics of community, and the relationship between individuals and communities. Students will learn how stories can be analyzed for their social meaning and how to document others, as well as oneself, in images, sounds, and words using ethnographic methods.

Content: Students are introduced to ethnography, the systematic study and recording of human cultures. This is a course about the stories that constitute people’s everyday lives and the significance of documenting and writing about these life stories. Students will be introduced to theories and practices related to ethnographic storytelling with an emphasis on storytelling and narrative and to the methodological techniques social scientists use to collect, analyze, and write about these real-life stories. Course materials include social scientific forms of writing, short stories, autobiography, as well as documentary films, photographs, and digital audio and visual texts. Students will conduct an original ethnographic research project.

Prerequisite: SJSC 1100 or SJSC 1110 and two SJSC electives, OR PBHL 1100 and two PBHL electives, with grades of C- or better

Credits: 4