Professor Ann Marie Leshkowich
Beaven 231
793-2788
aleshkow@holycross.edu
Office Hours: M 2-4, W 2-3, F 10-11

 

Assignment Objectives

Learning how to conduct an anthropological study of the culture and society of a specific country requires practicing two different, but closely related skills: 1) defining and analyzing theoretical models for understanding the country's social institutions and cultural ideas in light of its history, and 2) constructing a project and methodology that will provide information to address these concerns. Weekly written assignments will give you the opportunity to develop and practice both of these skills.

While the assignments vary from analytical to ethnographic exercises, each asks you to relate your ideas or findings to the readings for that week. For each assignment, make sure that you formulate a thesis statement, present it in the introductory paragraph, and use it to guide your arguments in the body of your paper.

***Weekly assignments will not be required for weeks 6 and 10, when 5-7 page essays are due.***

 

Arguments and Thesis Statements

Response papers are relatively short, but they each require you to reflect critically on the course's material, themes, and modes of inquiry. Each paper MUST have an introductory paragraph with a clearly articulated thesis that states the argument which the rest of the paper will advance. A thesis statement is not a declaration of fact, a broad claim, or an obvious assertion. A thesis statement is an interesting and specific contention about which one can reasonably debate and disagree. A thesis statement also serves to orient the reader by highlighting the major themes which will be discussed in the rest of the paper. Each of the assignments below pose questions which are intended to guide you in formulating a provocative and insightful thesis.

Examples of thesis statements:

BAD: The village has played an important role in Vietnamese life. (This statement is both obvious and general; nobody would be likely to disagree.)

BETTER: Idealized images of pre-colonial village society play an important role in contemporary Vietnamese debates about national identity. (This statement relates discussions of villages to the important topic of Vietnamese identity today, but it doesn't specify the role played by these idealized images of village life and hence can't easily be contested. The reader has no clue as to how or why villages are important or what images of them are like.)

GOOD: In contemporary Vietnam, images of pre-colonial village society are often invoked to claim that all Vietnamese share a common cultural heritage rooted in the bonds of community and mutual assistance. Although seemingly based in historical fact, these images are in fact romanticized views of Vietnamese society which gloss over differences in gender, class, region, religion and ethnicity which have divided Vietnamese both in the past and in the present. (These sentences introduce a specific characterization of the way images of village life are used today and make a clear, but arguable statement as to the nature and/or significance of this usage.)

For an excellent detailed discussion of how to formulate a thesis statement, take a look at this guide from Harvard University's Writing Center.

 

Paper Requirements and Grading

Each paper should be 2-3 double-spaced pages. Assignments are due in hard copy form at the beginning of class. Electronic submissions will not be accepted. Nine assignments will be given, and each student must complete at least eight. Each of the eight assignments will be worth three points, for a total of 25% of your course grade (with the inclusion of one bonus point). A ninth paper can be completed for extra credit up to a maximum of 25 points. Late papers will not be accepted.

 

CALENDAR OF WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS

Week 1: August 29
INTRODUCTION
No assignment

 

Week 2: September 5
CHINA AND CONFUCIANISM
Writing Assignment #1: Kieu as an Index of Vietnamese Values

The Tale of Kieu is frequently described as the masterpiece of Vietnamese literature. It is also a piece of profound importance to Vietnamese, for it serves as what Alexander Woodside calls "a kind of continuing emotional laboratory in which all the great and timeless issues of personal morality and political obligation are tested and resolved (or left unresolved) for each new generation." Pick a passage or an episode from the poem and analyze what it suggests about Vietnamese society and values. Be sure to consider how the episode might be viewed by different types of people from different perspectives (you might discuss gender, class, or historical period). Use your discussion to consider the extent to which a literary masterpiece such as Kieu can help anthropologists understand a culture. (For example, you might discuss whether the poem's extensive borrowing from an earlier Chinese novel makes Kieu less Vietnamese. Or, is borrowing from China an intrinsic part of Vietnamese identity?)

 

Week 3: September 12
FRENCH COLONIALISM
Writing Assignment #2: The Cultural Politics of Colonialism

All of our readings for this week explore how French colonialism prompted several generations of Vietnamese to evaluate and change their conception of what it meant to be Vietnamese. The issues under consideration varied from Confucianism to filial piety to the role of women to the meaning of the Tale of Kieu. Pick one of these issues and outline the different viewpoints on it raised by key participants in debates about colonialism. What role did discussions of this issue play in anti-colonial debates? Based on your example, how can we understand the link between culture and colonialism?

 

Week 4: September 19
TRADITIONAL FAMILY VALUES
Writing Assignment #3: Kinship, Vietnamese-Style

This week's assignment begins with an exercise:
1) Sit down and construct a family tree. With yourself as the center, label the other members of your family according to their titles (father, grandmother, cousin, etc.). You should use the actual titles which your family does. If they're not in English, provide both the terms and an approximate translation.
2) Next, draw another family tree, except this time label the members of your family according to their titles in Vietnam using the reading by Tai, "How to Speak Like a Vietnamese."
3) Finally, make a list of any uses of English kinship terminology to refer to people outside of your family. For example, you might call a close family friend "aunt" or "uncle."
For the response paper, please consider one of the following questions:
a. From the exercise, where did you have problems translating your kinship terms? What was emphasized in Vietnamese that was not in English or the language used within your family, and vice-versa? What do these differences suggest to you about the kinds of familial relationships and concepts emphasized and de-emphasized in the Vietnamese model?
b. The theme of inside versus outside is a prevalent one when talking about the Vietnamese family. How does this theme shape the roles of women and men within the family? Thinking about the folktales in the Jamieson article, in what ways does the division of inside from outside create tensions within the family?
c. In what ways can filial piety work to promote the interests of the larger community and nation, and when can it do the opposite? Which tendencies are, in your opinion, stronger, and why? (Hint: to answer this question, you may want to review the reading by Tai from last week.)

 

Week 5: September 26
CHANGING FAMILIES
Writing Assignment #4: The State's Role in Shaping Families

A central argument of Pham Van Bich's book is that changes in the Vietnamese family are due not simply to socio-economic transformations, but to the active efforts of the socialist state to promote certain types of families and family values. While we tend in the US to think of the family as private and personal, the American government does in fact play a large role in promoting certain family forms, types of relationships, and values. Think, for example, of current debates about estate taxes, same-sex marriages, welfare, and family leave. For this essay, find a newspaper or magazine article about US government (federal, state, or local) policies or proposals which affect families. What political, economic, social, and cultural issues are involved? Based you your example and this week's reading, how would you compare the relationship between state policies and families in the US and Vietnam?

 

Week 6: October 3
ESSAY #1 DUE THIS WEEK

 

Week 7: October 10
VILLAGE SOCIETY
Writing Assignment #5: Reading a Community through Physical Space

Neil Jamieson's discussion of the traditional Vietnamese village begins with a popular anthropological trope of describing the physical plan of the village: its overall appearance, boundaries, structures, houses, and the implements typically found there. He then explains what these physical aspects of the village tell us about the social relationships and cultural values of its inhabitants. In this fieldwork assignment, you will explore how the structure and physical plan of a community reflect and shape its values and relationships. First, pick a community (Holy Cross, your home town, a Worcester neighborhood, etc.). Second, picture the community as an outsider would. What are your impressions on entering it? What are the community's physical boundaries? What do they suggest about the nature of the community? What other structures and physical attributes stand out? What do these reveal about the people who live and/or work in this community, their typical behaviors, and their relationships to each other? Based on this exercise, what do you feel are the strengths and weaknesses of reading a community through its physical space? (Hint: To keep to the 2-3 page length of this paper, don't try to describe everything about the geographical plan of the community you have chosen. Instead, focus on one or two important or interesting features.)

 

Week 8: October 17
VILLAGE IN CHANGE
Writing Assignment #6: The Absent Informant

Due to the circumstances of Hy Van Luong's research, much of his book relies on information supplied by a village resident who now lives in Toronto. This assignment asks you to do a field exercise in which you rely on somebody who is no longer a regular part of the community you are studying. First, pick a community with which you are currently familiar (your hometown, high school, Holy Cross, Worcester, etc.). Then, pick someone you know who has not spent time there for at least several years, such as a friend who moved away or a graduate of the school. Interview that person about the community: what life was like, the different types of people involved in the community, and how the community has changed over time. Finally, compare what your informant tells you to your own perceptions and knowledge of the community. Use the assignment to describe your findings and to make an argument about the strengths and weaknesses of reliance on an absent informant. How should anthropologists use and analyze memories in their research? (Hint: You might find it helpful to make an argument about how you would evaluate Hy Van Luong's book in light of your own research with an absent informant.)

NOTE: PROPOSAL FOR FINAL PAPER ALSO DUE THIS WEEK

 

Week 9: October 24
RELIGION
Writing Assignment #7: Vietnam's Religious Revival

Religion is commonly described as a set of traditional beliefs and practices, and it is often assumed that the development of a modern industrialized society based on scientific rationality will lead to a decline in the popularlity of religion. Today, Vietnam is experiencing rapid economic growth, and yet religion, rather than fading away, seems to be becoming stronger and more important in people's daily lives. How can we understand this? This week, we are reading three different accounts of Vietnam's religious revival (Le Hong Ly, Malarney, and Kleinen). Pick one and describe why the author thinks religion is on the rise. Then, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this explanation. What other explanations do you think need to be considered? Finally, use your paper to reflect on the significance of the revival of religion in Vietnam for our notions of tradition and modernity.

 

Week 10: October 31
WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH
ESSAY #2 DUE THIS WEEK

 

Week 11: November 7
MARKETS AND MORALITY
Writing Assignment #8: Marketplace Morality

Our readings this week discuss how many Vietnamese worry that the spread of a market economy threatens moral values, mostly because they view the market as promoting selfishness and forcing people to do business with strangers whose lack of kin or personal ties to their business counterparts might make them untrustworthy. What notions of markets and morality do people in the US have, and how do they compare to Vietnam? To answer this question, conduct an observation of a retail setting. Like Professor Leshkowich did in Ben Thanh market, pick a store and spend a couple of hours there watching business being conducted. Pay attention to how the employees relate to each other, to customers, and to management. What rules seem to govern behavior? Does the marketplace have a specific kind of morality, and how does this relate to morality in other aspects of American life? In your paper, use your findings to compare the relationship between markets and morality in the US and Vietnam and to reflect on the significance or underlying reasons for these differences.

NOTE: FINAL PAPER ABSTRACT AND BIBLIOGRAPHY ALSO DUE THIS WEEK.

 

Week 12: November 14
DIASPORA
Writing Assignment #9: Diasporic Families

This week, we explore how the experience of immigrating to the US has affected Vietnamese families, particularly relationships between parents and children and moral values. This assignment asks you to interview an immigrant (of any national origin, not just Vietnamese) about his or her family life and how it has changed as the result of moving to the US. What was family life like in his or her country of origin? Ask about such things as parent-child relationships, family values, gendered divisions of labor, and relationships with the wider community. How have these things changed in the US? What relationship does the family have with relatives and friends in their country of origin? Is family life better or worse in the US? Why? In your paper, be sure to compare your findings to those presented in the readings for this week. Are they similar or different, and with what significance?

 

Week 13: November 28
Student presentations on final research projects. No written assignment this week.

 

Monday, December 10
FINAL PAPERS DUE by 5 p.m. in Professor Leshkowich's office (Beaven 231).

 

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu