Matthew S. Monahan
"I realize that I participate in the same affect economy that I write critically about" (Adams 26).
1.1 Statement of Context
At Metropolitan Business Academy Inter-district Magnet High School of New Haven, Connecticut, we have attempted to adopt the Comer Community School model, building a sense of community in an inter-district magnet school is no small feat. The challenges are many, but after completing this unit students will have a greater understanding of shared political-economic conditions that transcend simple geographic proximity.
Although the opportunities for curricular creativity in English, especially at the senior level, are decreasing at an alarming rate
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, I am fortunate to also be teaching an elective course in film studies. Students will be exposed to a number of non-fiction texts, as well as a number of social-realist films that fall under the umbrella of ethnography. In addition to students' analyses of themes over a variety of texts, they will in fact be required to construct ethnographies of their own.
Boston native and Yale graduate anthropologist Karilyn Crockett, like Junot Diaz currently teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, visited our seminar meeting on Tuesday, July 1, 2014, and in doing so opened my eyes to the possibilities of ethnography inside and out of the classroom. Up until this point I was aware that as a group our Institute seminar's focus was community, but I was not entirely sure what was meant by the term "ethnography."
The American Heritage Dictionary provides the following:
community 1. A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government. 2. a. A group of people having common interests. b. A group viewed as forming a distinct segment of society.
ethnography 1. The branch of anthropology that deals with the description of specific human cultures, using methods such as close observation and interviews. 2. A text produced using such methods.
1.2 Descriptive Overview
"That things take longer than planned is a basic given in qualitative research" (Glesne 34).
This unit runs for approximately six weeks. In years past, students in Introduction to Film have critically viewed about one film per week; this unit decreases the pace of content covered while it increases the amount of time for and responsibility of students to engage with one another. The culminating activity of this unit requires students to conduct ethnographic studies of their own. Rather than simply record and analyze their findings, the goal is action research. After intense study of the "lines of division and solidarity," student generated ethnographies will create positive social change.
Students will be required to keep running logs and field journals, conduct interviews, and collect documents (both authentic and manufactured
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). Ethnography is perfect fit for my course as it requires students to become more active, especially in terms of speaking, listening, and writing.
"Much of what we seek to find out in ethnography is knowledge that others already have" (Hymes). Although I attempt to avoid what Paulo Friere terms "the banking method" of education, it is sometimes difficult to shift the role of the teacher especially when the students themselves have limited experience with a particular type of text (e.g. black and white and foreign language films) and as a result look to the teacher as expert. Getting students to value their own ideas and the ideas of their peers is of utmost importance.
"Rather than studying people ethnography means learning from people" (Spradley). One area in which I have success is getting students to express their own ideas and interpretations of films through blogging; however, a blog should not exist in a vacuum, that very much defeats the purposes of not only creating a wider audience for one's ideas but a forum and a catalyst for ideas to grow in a communal setting.
This unit includes a wide variety of print and non-print texts that examine such central community issues as power, powerlessness, agency, and acquiescence. Among the resources suitable for use are: Lee's Do The Right Thing with its themes of race and gentrification in relationship to the lesser known dramatic works of August Wilson Jitney and Two Trains Running; Granik's Winter's Bone in comparison with readings from John Gaventa's studies of corporate mining towns in Appalachia, which will in turn act as a bridge to a study of John Sayles early masterwork Matewan, a dramatization of early labor organizing efforts.
