Megan Little's Instructor Page

We had some technical glitches in class today, but the Forum should be up and running. Please be sure to post your introductions before our next class. I also asked the class to get the course packet and read the first few pages of the Geertz article. It's a hard piece to start out the class with. But it will also be a text that we return to again and again and again. It introduces the link between literature and ethnography that is the core premise of this class, and also gives us some background on the close reading exercises of anthropologists.

Welcome to Literature and Ethnography! Click here to read more about this class. During the first couple days of class, we'll go over what this course is about, I'll show you where all the materials are on this website, and I'll also cover all the boring policies and requirements. We'll also do a couple short exercises on close reading--the most important skill we'll be practicing in this course, one that seems to bridge the disciplines of English and Anthropology.

For the first week of class, please buy the course reading packet at Jenn's Copy Center (south location), and your books from either the Co-op or online: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Zora Neal Hurston's Mules and Men and Their Eyes Were Watching God. (We won't be reading these books until the second and third units, so there's time for shipping.)

The first reading we'll be discussing is an excerpt from Geertz's Interpretation of Cultures, in your reading packet. We start on this text the second class meeting, so please get your packets as soon as possible!