Assignments
Grading Policy
1. All assignments will be turned in via Canvas unless notified otherwise.
2. All documents should be turned in single-spaced and as a PDF.
3. Assignments are due by 11:59 PM on the due date.
Late assignments will be docked 5% per day late that they are turned in.
4. Failure to comply with the submission instructions outlined in each assignment description will result in a reduced score on any assignment.
Response Papers (4) — 30%
For each of the required books, and for one of the optional books of your own choosing, you will write a response paper of no more than 800 words. This short response should give a summary of the overarching argument of the book, including at least one salient ethnographic example that helps clarify the theoretical argument that the author puts forward in the book. The response must also include a brief critical engagement with the overarching argument. Important note: ‘critical’ engagement in academic work does not simply mean a ‘negative’ engagement with the work. Rather, critical engagement entails going beyond the argument as stated by the author to consider any of the implications, strengths, or problems with the argument. This may entail analyzing the unstated assumptions of the argument, considering the broader implications of the argument, considerations of what the author omitted, explaining how the argument articulates with other theorists or ideas, or, indeed, problems inherent in the argument. The response paper should include both summary and substantive critical engagement, and it should demonstrate that you have read, understood, and engaged meaningfully with the material in each monograph. The rubric for response papers is available on Canvas. Each response paper is due before class on the last discussion day for each book, as laid out in the syllabus. These will be turned in on Canvas, uploaded as a single-spaced PDF, beginning with a cover page that includes 1) your full name, 2) date, 3) the name of this class (ANTHR 327), 4) the citation information of the book being reviewed, and 5) a word count of the essay. The uploaded PDF filename should include your LastName_FirstName-AUTHOR_Response in the file name, as in the following example: “Hickman_Jacob-YANG_Response.pdf”
Field Notes — 15%
There will be two field notes assignments throughout the semester. Because of the difficulty of having students in the class attend live Hmong ritual performances, you will engage with some raw ethnographic film and engage with it as if you were doing participant observation. You will be provided two sets of videos, one for each assignment. These are condensed versions of key Hmong rituals. Your assignment is to watch these videos, and immerse yourself in them. A cursory watching 'in the background' while you do other things will not suffice. These videos are quite raw. There is no narration, and they are not curated documentaries. Rather, they contain raw footage. The point is to immerse yourself into the footage and do what might be termed 'digital participant observation.' In other words, immerse yourself in the footage, pay attention to the details, use your growing knowledge of Hmong culture, symbolism, semiotics, and ritual practice to try and make sense of what is happening in the footage. For each of these assignments, try to write at least 2000 words of field notes that summarize your experience and analysis. Field notes are not a final paper, but rather they are a log of observations, insights, questions, and reactions that arise from your experience as an ethnographer and participant observer. They range from basic observation and description to analytical abstraction, as you think you are starting to see how the events you are observing make sense to the people involved in them. In order to help you, consider paying attention to the finite details of what you are observing: what concrete actions are the ritual experts and others undertaking, what might these things mean, how are people reacting to the ritual, what symbolism is involved? Describe the tools and objects in detail, describe the nuanced actions and reactions that you observe. Ask yourself how all of these details and nuance relate back to what you are learning about Hmong culture and history in this class. These raw field notes will be turned in by the deadline, as a PDF, to Canvas. The uploaded PDF filename should include your LastName_FirstName-Fieldnotes1 (or 2) in the file name, as in the following example: “Hickman_Jacob-Fieldnotes1.pdf” The video for the First Field Notes assignment can be found here {TBD}. The Second Field Notes assignment will consist of two parts. {Tentative: Instead of participant observation, this assignment will focus on another vital component of ethnography--interview. To start, you will need to watch the short documentary "The Split Horn: The Life of A Hmong Shaman in America." It can be accessed through this Kanopy.com link using your BYU login. Next, you will listen to an interview conducted by Dr. Hickman. The link to the interview is here. You can listen to the recording but it is non-downloadable and it is not to be distributed.}
Short Paper — 10%
You will write a short paper summarizing one key insight that you gained into Hmong experience over the course of the readings and/or field notes assignments. The point of this short paper is to synthesize your understanding of some element of Hmong cultural experience and to make sense of it using your anthropological perspective. You are free to choose any element of Hmong culture that has been recurrently explored/expressed throughout the required readings for this course. Drawing from multiple of these sources, weave together an analysis of your chosen topic. Be concise and focus your paper on a single phenomenon, so that you can analyze it in depth. This paper should be no longer than 1200 words. The short paper will be due by 11:59pm on the due date. It should be turned in on Canvas, uploaded as a single-spaced PDF, beginning with a cover page that includes 1) your full name, 2) date, 3) the name of this class (ANTHR 327), 4) “Short Paper” followed by your title for the paper, and 5) a word count of the essay. The uploaded PDF filename should include your LastName_FirstName-ShortPaper in the file name, as in the following example: “Hickman_Jacob-ShortPaper.pdf”.
Long Paper — 30%
In lieu of a final examination for this class, the summary assessment exercise will entail the writing of a final paper on some topic relevant to the global Hmong diaspora and Hmong culture. You need to provide your own, original, anthropological analysis of the topic that you researched. The specific topic for this final paper is up to you, but it must be developed in consultation with the instructor. It should be broader than the topic you wrote about in the short paper, and one key difference between these assignments is that the Long Paper must be based on original research. In other words, you must extend your research beyond the required readings for this course. This might include diving more deeply into a topic we covered in this course and doing additional research to flesh out that topic, or it might involve an investigation of a topic that we did not cover (or only covered in a cursory fashion) in the course readings and discussion. You may consider hmongstudies.org as a resource for finding relevant scholarship on your topic. You may also collect primary data through social media or other archives relevant to Hmong culture. The expected range for this final paper is 4000-6000 words. Be sure to clearly cite all of your sources, using the Chicago (Author-Date) citation format for in-text citations and your references cited list. The paper will be graded for its content and style, evidence of your original research, and your overall analysis of some dimension of Hmong culture that extends beyond the content on the course syllabus. A grading rubric can be found in the course readings folder. The long paper will be due by April 22 at 11:59pm. An ungraded full draft of the long paper is also due by 11:59pm on April 16, the last day of class. This ungraded draft will not be graded for content, but the failure to turn in a complete draft will reflect negatively on your grade for the graded draft. The point here is to encourage you to draft the paper by the end of the semester, so that you are only revising this culminating paper during the final examination period. It should be turned in via Canvas, uploaded as a single-spaced PDF, beginning with a cover page that includes 1) your full name, 2) date, 3) the name of this class (ANTHR 327), 4) “Long Paper” followed by your title for the paper, and 5) a word count of the essay. The uploaded PDF filename should include your LastName_FirstName-LongPaper in the file name, as in the following example: “Hickman_Jacob-LongPaper.pdf”. Please add "DRAFT" to the filename of the ungraded draft, and please add "FINAL" to the filename of the final paper for grading.
Seminar Participation — 15%
The regular seminar discussions in this course are critical to helping you understand the historical and contemporary Hmong diaspora, the various ethnographic and historical examples we will cover, and the variety of theoretical frameworks that have been developed to understand these. Students are expected to help summarize and critique key arguments and concepts on the table for discussion in any given day. This includes taking the initiative in discussion to present the core arguments of a set of readings and provide a substantive analysis of both the core reading and some additional reading that helps us gain greater ethnographic or analytic depth for that day. Genuine, deep engagement in this discussion is critical for us to collectively struggle with and draw insights from the material on the syllabus. Also, on occasion I may assign miscellaneous tasks related to the course content along with a short write-up or other findings to bring to a seminar session. These will be due as they are assigned. It is also essential that all readings are completed before each lecture/discussion in order to facilitate productive discussion and critiques of the various research approaches we will cover. Both attendance and participation in discussions will factor into these considerations. Participation in seminar discussions will be graded on the following dimensions by the instructor for each student at the end of the semester: 1. Come to class clearly having engaged with the text(s) for that day, ready to summarize, question, critique, debate, or ask clarifying questions about the reading 2. Make specific references to the readings (including citing page numbers) in the seminar discussion 3. Productively make connections across readings, helping the seminar group develop a comprehensive understanding and analysis that draws connections and comparisons across the literature 4. Undertake miscellaneous assignments in good faith, and bring substantive insights and results to the seminar discussion to productively contribute to the seminar I will ask each of you to please thoughtfully fill out a self-assessment form based on your contributions to and performance in this course. This will be uploaded to Canvas using the following file name convention: LastName_FirstName_ANTHR341-Self-Assessment.pdf. This is due the last day of finals. A Word Template and a PDF Template can be downloaded on Canvas.