Luke Eric Lassiter, Humanities and Anthropology, Marshall University
Director of the Graduate Humanities Program
“Fields of Collaboration: On Collaborative Ethnography and Community-Based Research”
Curtin Hall 175, 3243 North Downer Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53211

Abstract: Ethnography continues to be an exciting way to learn about others and ourselves. This presentation surveys changes in ethnographic theory and practice over the past several decades, with a focus on how ideas about collaboration, collaborative ethnography, and community-based research continue to transform how ethnographers think about and carry out their fieldwork, writing, teaching, community work, and other activities.

Luke Eric Lassiter is professor of humanities and anthropology and Director of the Graduate Humanities Program at Marshall University. In this role he coordinates a wide range of faculty-student collaborative research and creative projects and programs, including the Glenwood Center for Scholarship in the Humanities, for which he is the Co-Director. Lassiter is the author of several books, including The Power of Kiowa Song, Invitation to Anthropology, The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography, and, most recently (with Elizabeth Campbell), Doing Ethnography Today. He founded the journal Collaborative Anthropologies in 2007, and served as its editor or co-editor until 2013. In 2005, Lassiter received the prestigious Margaret Mead Award for The Other Side of Middletown: Exploring Muncie’s African American Community. His work brought faculty, students, and community members together to produce a collaborative ethnography of Muncie’s black community. Much of Lassiter’s work has focused on how scholars and local communities can research and write together to advance multicultural understanding and social change, including as it relates to developing community-university collaborative pedagogies. He’s delivered numerous invited lectures on these and other topics at national and international colleges and universities, including at Princeton, University of Michigan, Dartmouth, Georgetown, University of British Columbia, Lund University, and the University of Nottingham.