Students will learn virtually every aspect of ethnographic research including project planning, research, writing skills, and how to conceptualize and carry out fieldwork, including conducting interviews and recording and analyzing cultural events. The course will help students to develop an international perspective of the world, to analyze social issues, to engage in critical discourses of the world as a globalcommunity, and to develop an understanding of the self and others in a transcultural world. A major aspect of the program is that students will learn directly from Ghanaian scholars, students, musicians, filmmakers, and artists. The integrated coursework and study abroad component also gives students an experiential and conceptual understanding of a West African country and culture that contrasts sharply with social practices and aspirations in the United States.
During the summer we will have 2½ study weeks in Ghana from July 27th-August 15th. The study abroad segment consists of lectures, gallery visits, attendance at music performances, and field trips to the slave castles at Cape Coast and Elmina, Kakum Nature Park, the palace of the Asantehene (paramount chief of Asante). The students will have opportunities to carry out fieldwork at schools, hospitals, religious shrines, music events, royal palaces, sacred sites, and at various business and economic environments.
The program, sponsored by the Department of Africana Studies, will be taught and directed by Professor James Burns of the Departments of Music and Africana Studies. For more information about the program contact him at jburns@binghamton.edu or 607 777-2595. He will be assisted by Professor Pierrette Abouadji of the Theatre Department.
