Ethnography Project
Background
The Yale-New Haven Ethnography Project, established in the fall 2006, aims to provide students with opportunities to conduct original field research in New Haven and its surroundings. Using an anthropological lens, we seek to engage with our city in ways that are meaningful both academically and civically. The project identifies a research topic each semester and establishes links with local organizations to carry out research that furthers existing community development initiatives. It maintains its academic autonomy and openness, however, to allow the project to accommodate various student interests.
Today
Our first semester-long endeavor is a documentary history of the Chatham Square community of Fair Haven. We are collaborating with the New Haven Oral History Project and the Community Foundation to create a social history of this historic immigrant neighborhood. Through oral history interviews, photography workshops, and neighborhood involvement, we hope to stimulate reflective and creative endeavors by the community to foster a renewed sense of locality and place. This project will serve as a spearhead for the Ethnography Project in allowing us to experiment with ways in which anthropological research can be conducted in our local surroundings while furthering community development.
|