From story to theory: Ethnographic writing workshop with Professor Kirin Narayan
The South Asia Research Institute (SARI) is hosting a writing workshop with Prof. Kirin Narayan on ethnographic writing, focusing particularly on the challenges of interlinking ethnographic stories with theory. The workshop will draw on Prof. Narayan’s book Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov (2012), which is freely available through the ANU Library.
The workshop is primarily intended for HDR students, but staff are also welcome to attend. Participants are requested to write up a 500-word vignette in advance. This could be any scene from their ethnographic research that dramatises the central theoretical concern of their thesis or writing project (the theoretical interest need not to be explicitly stated). In addition to bringing one hard copy of this vignette to the workshop for discussion, participants are asked to bring along paper and a pen or pencil.
The workshop will be two hours long, and catering will be provided. The workshop capacity is limited to 18 people, so spots will be allocated to those who register early.
Please send your 500-word blurb to Remeen Firoz: remeen.firoz@anu.edu.au by 22 August 2024.
For any questions or concerns, please contact: Remeen Firoz: remeen.firoz@anu.edu.au.
About the convenor
Kirin Narayan is emerita professor in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. She received the inaugural Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing from the American Anthropological Association for her first book, Storytellers, Saints and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching (1989). In several subsequent books, she continued experimenting with ethnographic form and its relation to other narrative genres, including fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, and family history. Her latest book, Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora will be available from the University of Chicago Press and HarperCollins India in September 2024.