Ethnography has traditionally presented itself as a practice of “participant observation.” In this course we shift the sensory focus to “participant listening,” and ask how an aural engagement with the world differs from our more familiar visual engagements. Over two weeks of intensive theory and practice, students will experiment with new ways of sensing the socio-natural environment and build collaborative projects that foreground how sound shapes our experience of the world.

The course is partly classroom-based, and we will spend much of the first week reading, learning from experts and practicing various techniques of listening at the Concordia Ethnography Lab. The other part is field based. Taking the Verdun shoreline as our ethnographic object, students will work together to convey the environmental complexities of a place where land meets water, city meets river, and many species contend with histories of colonialism, industry and wonder.

The course is run in parallel with a similar course run by Heather Swanson and Knut Gunnar Nustad at the University of Oslo, and we will meet their group several times throughout the course as they work in parallel on Oslo’s Akerselva river.

The course includes an introductory grounding in anthropological theory and method, but is open to students with interdisciplinary backgrounds.

Instructor:

KREGG HETHERINGTON, with support from Patrizio McLelland and Polina Shubina.

Interventions from:

David Howes — Sensory Ethnography

Magali Babin — Listening to the Shoreline

Andrea Ballestero — Sensing the Underground

Nikhil Anand — The Anthroposea

Natalie Doonan — Eating the Urban Wild

Course Requirements:

Students do not have to have any specific ethnographic, artistic or recording experience to take the course, but any of these skills will be an asset. The course itself is intensive: students need to be present for all aspects of the course, read all required readings, and be prepared to work intensively on a collaborative group project. Graded components of the course include short online presentations, a personal reflection essay, a collaborative multimodal work-in-progress, and a final paper.

Supported by:

• Department of Sociology and Anthropology;

• Faculty of Arts and Sciences;

• Concordia Ethnography Lab;

• Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology;

• Norwegian Research Council

Find more information about the 2025 edition here.