Call for Papers: Unbounding Ethnography Conference

Unbounding Ethnography image

The Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst requests presentation and poster proposals for the first interdisciplinary graduate student conference on ethnographic methodologies held on our campus.  The November 4-5 2016 conference is titled Unbounding Ethnography: Theory and Method Beyond the Disciplines, with Keynote address by Michael Burawoy, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. 

The goal of the conference is to convene dialogue between graduate ethnographers from a range of disciplines, including (but not limited to) sociology, anthropology, political science, education, economics, journalism, and communication. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and ISSR.

This call for papers (or posters) is open to graduate students at UMass and the Five Colleges, Incorporated. Undergraduates are invited to submit poster proposals. We are looking for scholarship that addresses key contemporary questions, using a variety of epistemological approaches to participant observation. We are particularly interested in methodological challenges and innovations in the field. Presentation of preliminary findings is welcome. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

  •  Social movements, activism and protest

  •  Food politics

  •  Social and political inequality

  •  Migration and citizenship

  •  Labor

  •  Gender and consumption

  •  Urban (re)development

  •  Nation and identity

  •  Mass incarceration and the Prison Industrial Complex

Please visit the conference website to see the full call for papers and to upload a proposal by Thursday, September 15, 2016. Proposals should include a title, a 250-word abstract, presentation format preference, affiliation, and contact information. For further information, please email us at unbounding@soc.umass.edu, or visit the conference event’s Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/UnboundingEthnography2016.