Anthropology Seminar

As part of the Community Research sequence, every spring term students will enroll in the Seminar on Ethnography.  The course is restricted to anthropology majors who take the course four times over their university career for a total of 12 credits. The seminar is a peer-mentoring course in which younger students can establish a relationship with older students and faculty. The seminar has been designed to give this selective group of anthropology majors the opportunity to be mentored by faculty and to get to know other students both within and outside of formal classes.  The seminar is a place where fieldwork can be planned and issues of participant observation that come up in other courses can be discussed and analyzed.

It is expected that each student presents his or her research in the seminar. The freshman and sophomore students present work they have undertaken in the local West Philadelphia community.  Juniors present work from their just completed internships that will both enrich the seminar and allow for feedback on analysis. Seniors will be who plan to go on to graduate school will be writing a thesis and making plans for publication, while students going on to work in corporations or non-profits will be designing a final portfolio and presentation that can be part of their job application package. At each stage of their work, students will share that work with each other, developing a sense of camaraderie in the major and allowing older students to mentor younger ones.