Field Notebooks

A small spiral notebook that can be carried around on a frequent basis will help you note observations as your experience in ethnographic practice develops. Include a minimum of two entries per week (they don't have to be long, but they should contain observations you've made using your eyes--whether in your everyday life, on television, in films or videos, or in photographs or drawings/paintings. They must also relate to understanding the culture in which we live: here, now, twenty-first century North Texas).

This should not be at all an onerous assignment; take your notebook and use it when you do the Analogy exercise; use it for preparing your final project--and use it to reflect on culture in general, based on observations using the various visual media available to us today. Feel free to include photos or sketches related to your observations.

For those of you so disposed, the notebook can be augmented by visual materials and ephemera (newspaper clippings, snippets from the web, tickets to museums or other people-watching locales, etc.), which will earn extra points.

Web-savvy folk with blogs may post their observations there. Be sure to tag your entries "visual anthropology" so I don't have to read through your accounts of what you had for breakfast that day, or the latest news about celebrities I don't even recognize.

This assignment is fairly simple, but it carries a hefty weight: 20 points. Take it seriously and pursue it religiously.