Engaged Ethnography

In 2011 I began developing a syllabus for a graduate anthropology seminar titled Engaging Ethnography. In the course, students would explore anthropologists’ varying approaches to politically engaged research and consider how epistemologies, research questions, methodologies, writing, and other products of research are transformed by different forms of engagement. 

Seeking suggestions of exemplary monographs by engaged ethnographers for potential inclusion in the seminar’s reading list, I put out a call over the Society for Urban, National, and Transnational Anthropology (SUNTA) listserv. To my surprise, I received over 50 recommendations, along with a dozen requests to share the list I compiled. The idea for a collaborative online space for sharing and growing the list was born.

I hope Engaged Ethnography will foster broader reading and teaching of engaged ethnography and nurture the growth of a loose network of politically engaged ethnographers.


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scholarly products

Stuesse, Angela.  2016.  Home to Roost: Activist Research in the Deep SouthUniversity of California Press Blog.  November 15. 

Stuesse, Angela. 2015.  “Anthropology for Whom?  Challenges and Prospects of Activist Scholarship.” In Public Anthropology in a Borderless World.  S. Beck and C. Maida, eds.  Pp. 221-246. New York: Berghahn Books.

Yelvington, Kevin A., Alisha R. Winn, E. Christian Wells, Angela Stuesse, Nancy Romero-Daza, Lauren C. Johnson, Antoinette T. Jackson, Emelda Curry, Heide Castaneda. 2015. “Diversity Dilemmas and Opportunities: Training the Next Generation of Anthropologists.”  American Anthropologist. 117(2):387-392.

Stuesse, Angela, with B. Manz, E. Oglesby, K. Olson, V. Sanford, C. Snow, & H. Walsh-Haney. 2013.  “Sí hubo genocidio: Anthropologists and the Genocide Trial of Guatemala’s Rios Montt.”  American Anthropologist.  115(4):658-663.

Griffith, David, Shao-hua Liu, Michael Paolisso, and Angela Stuesse. 2013.  “Enduring Whims and Public Anthropology.”  American Anthropologist.  115(1):125-126.