SOSANT9020 – Writing Up: From Fieldnotes to Thesis

Course content

This course will take place after you have returned from fieldwork and will accompany you through the early stages of turning your fieldnotes into PhD thesis chapters. During the course, you will share some of your writings, receive feedback from teachers and fellow students, and comment on your colleagues' work. The course will also feature writing nsessions and exercises that will help you address common issues that PhD candidates encounter in the writing-up phase. Since reading is foundational for good writing, we will also read monographs and completed PhD theses. We will discuss different styles of ethnographic writing, of combining and experimenting with textual form, and of structuring book-length arguments.

The course will be taught over five days of seminars concentrated in a 1-week block, and include the following themes:

  • strategies and challenges in turning fieldnotes into thesis chapters

  • ethnographic description and analysis - of place and context, conversations and relations, situations and processes

  • the use and role of theory in ethnographic writing

  • issues of voice, as well as positionality and reflexivity, and how to address those in the context of a PhD thesis

  • the tension of individual authorship and co-production in ethnography

  • collaboration and co-authorship, and sharing and collegial feedback

  • strategies to effectively structure your writing practice and address "writer's block."

Learning outcome

Knowledge

  • understand the genre of a PhD thesis in social anthropology and its possibilities and limitations

  • understand what makes for a "contribution to the discipline," and how to articulate that in your writing

  • appreciate how voice and positionality can be articulated in ethnographic writing

  • experience different ways in which ethnographic material can be presented and discussed

  • recognise the multiple styles of writing ethnography in anthropology today

Skills

  • outline the state of the art of the field that your scholarship contributes to

  • situate and present your ethnographic material within a particular scholarly discourse

  • analyse issues of positionality in ethnographic writing, and how these can be addressed in your own work

  • reflect on how your material can be presented in the most compelling way

General competence

  • sensitivity to (ethnographic) writing styles, to discern diverse forms and tools of expression and to make informed textual choices

  • ability to analyse relations between theory and ethnography with reference to specific research projects, and relations between textual form, method and theory

  • ability to critically read others’ texts and to provide and receive meaningful feedback

  • familiarity with a few strategies to overcome writing struggles

Admission to the course

This course is mandatory for PhD candidates in Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Social Sciences. Other PhD candidates in Anthropology or related disciplines may be considered for admission on a case-by-case basis.

For PhD candidates from the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo: Apply in Studentweb.

Other PhD candidates may apply by a webform. Please contact the PhD administration at the Department of Social Anthropology for access to the form:?Contact us - Faculty of Social Sciences

Application deadline: 1 September