405 Reading Assignment

ANT 40501 The Anthropology of Gender Dr. Dorothy D. Wills

Your reading assignments from the text are given in the Course Syllabus, along with the activities for each class meeting. You will be discussing them every week. You will also be doing reading in connection with the Book Report (#2), the Belief Systems assignment (#3) - if you are doing that one - and the individual project - if you are doing that one. The fieldwork project may not entail any reading.

Assignment #1 Fieldwork FOR WINTER 2009 (if doing the two-report option)

You may be doing a piece of field research on a topic of your own choice, related to the subject matter and approved by the instructor, during the first part of the quarter. Possible topics and methods will be discussed in class. Any readings for this project, whether from the library or internet, should also be checked with the instructor.

An Example of a Fieldwork Project:

1. You are interested in women pastors in different denominations. There is obviously a huge variation among religious groups regarding their attitude toward women clergy.

2. You start doing some background reading on the official positions of various churches, synagogues, temples, sects, etc.

3. Since you have limited time to carry out extensive fieldwork, you select a few congregations within easy access. For instance, if you lived in Pomona, you could pick a Catholic church, a Muslim mosque, a Baptist church, a Jewish synagogue, and a Buddhist temple. You would visit these locations and make an appointment to speak to a director, minister, or community leader.

4. You would compose a set of questions for the interview.

5. You would interview these people. You would ask if it would be okay to talk to members of the congregation, too. Then you would do that. If you have time, you would attend services and observe what goes on from the perspective of your topic (i.e., male/female roles, status, etc.).

6. You would do whatever other reading you can to supplement your findings.

Format:

Carry out your fieldwork, once you have had the topic approved. Design the methodology appropriate to the topic. I will help you do this. Fieldwork can include surveys, experiments, interviews, [participant] observations, oral history ... Other data collection can include use of primary sources, accessing data bases (such as the census), and simply reading the literature on the subject (secondary sources, mostly).

Written report should address 1) topic, 2) what's interesting or important about it, 3) methodology, 4) analysis and conclusions (if any, so far).. You may attach your data to the report or provide a description of it, along with the analysis. If you have any criticisms of your project (i.e., you'd have done something differently if you had to do it again), please address these, also. 3-5 pages should be sufficient, not including any attachments.