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City University of New York

Ph.D. Program in Anthropology

Anthropology 74000 Spring 2019

Latin America: Seminar on Research Methods and Sources

Marc Edelman

Tels. 212 817-8008 (GC) or 212 772-5659 (Hunter) medelman@hunter.cuny.edu

Office hours: Tues. 11:30am-12:30pm (GC, room 6402.08), Tues. & Fri. 2:30-3:30pm (Hunter,

Room 706 North), or by appointment

This course will be a collaborative seminar, writing practicum, workshop, and “writeshop.”

OBJECTIVES of the course include:

(1) to provide participants a space in which to develop or advance research projects with a Latin

American focus but which mainly employ documentary or other sources available in the New York

City area (or online or through inter-library loans);

(2) to undertake a “methodological reading” or “reverse engineering reading” of works on colonial

and nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first century Latin America with the goal of reflecting in

practical ways on the use of archival materials in

social anthropological research and on the potential

synergies of various kinds of documentary and

ethnographic methods;

(3) to examine conceptual, stylistic and

methodological issues that arise as part of the effort to

produce historically informed anthropological research

and writing;

(4) to develop deeper understanding of the politics of

journal publishing (e.g., peer review, metrics, etc.);

and

(5) to use the collaborative workshop to guide and

goad participants toward the publication of an article

in a peer-reviewed journal.

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REQUIREMENTS for the course include:

(1) active and informed participation in class discussions of assigned readings and other participants’

research projects (this means careful reading of assigned texts and other participants’ drafts);

(2) a preliminary statement (one or two brief paragraphs) about a planned research project for the

course, to be submitted via email no later than February 5;

(3) attendance at the February 7th event with Latin America bibliographers from the GC Library,

New York Public Library Research Division, CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, Centro de

Estudios Puertorriqueños at Hunter College, and NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black

Culture (4:00pm, room 9204 GC, YOU MUST PRE-REGISTER at bildner@gc.cuny.edu); (4) an oral presentation of approximately 15 minutes that outlines the rationale, possible sources and

research plan for the course paper;

(5) an oral presentation of approximately 40 minutes that presents the main findings of the research

for the course paper (presenters may assign a rough draft of their paper or other material in advance

of the meeting); and

(6) a written course paper (in Word format) due at the end of the semester (by May 15 at 9:30am).

Late papers will be accepted only under unusual circumstances. Class participation will be evaluated

by level of preparation, engagement in class discussions, and generosity to other students. This

syllabus may be modified during the semester.

REQUIRED BOOKS:

We will read the following books, all of which are available through the GC Virtual Bookstore

http://gc.textbookx.com/institutional/index.php?action=browse#books/2003786/. You may be

able to find better deals using http://www.bookfinder4u.com/ or another book search engine.

Grandia, Liza. 2012. Enclosed: Conservation, Cattle, and Commerce among the Q’eqchi’ Maya

Lowlanders. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 978-0295991665

Lapegna, Pablo. 2016. Soybeans and Power: Genetically Modified Crops, Environmental

Politics, and Social Movements in Argentina. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-

0190215149

Silverblatt, Irene M. 2004. Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized

World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press (an electronic version of this book is available

through the CUNY Library). ISBN 978-0822334170

Sullivan, Paul R. 2004. Xuxub Must Die: The Lost Histories of a Murder on the Yucatán.

Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 978-0822959441

Turits, Richard Lee. 2003. Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and

Modernity in Dominican History. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0804751056

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RECOMMENDED BOOKS:

Because clear prose helps to communicate your ideas and findings, these optional books are

highly recommended (older editions are fine and less expensive). You don’t need to read all

three of the books on prose writing; digging seriously into Bernoff, Lanham OR Zinsser is

probably sufficient. Many people find the Belcher book good for staying on track.

Belcher, Wendy Laura. 2009. Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic

Publishing Success. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Bernoff, Josh. 2016. Writing without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean.

New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Lanham, Richard A. 2007. Revising Prose. 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Zinsser, William. 2006. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. 7th ed., rev.

New York: HarperCollins.

A NOTE ABOUT BLACKBOARD AND E-MAIL:

This course will make limited use of Blackboard, which is a convenient way to email the entire

group and to share documents. You must check your GC email to receive emails that Blackboard

generates.

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RESOURCES (obviously just an illustrative, not a comprehensive list)

Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO), Red de Bibliotecas Virtuales

http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/. Digitized versions of numerous books, research reports, data

bases, journals, theses, etc., mostly on contemporary issues. Links to the collections of research

institutes in most Latin American countries.

LANIC http://lanic.utexas.edu/ A portal with extensive links to research resources and

information on arts and culture, economy and finance, government, news media, academic

journals, organizations, political parties and elections, education, and environment.

The national archives of different countries often have useful web sites, for example

http://www.archivonacional.go.cr/ (Costa Rica) and http://www.archivonacional.cl/sitio/ (Chile).

These institutions frequently publish journals that contain information about the organization of

the archives and texts of significant documents in the collections. Often they have online finding

aids.

United Nations Development Programme. National human

development reports, one of the best sources of contemporary

social indicators, may be accessed through this page:

http://hdr.undp.org/reports/view_reports.cfm?type=3

Revistas académicas por país (LANIC)

http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/journals/indexesp.html

Proquest has an extensive microform series, which may be

obtained via inter-library loan. Some examples: OSS/State

Department Intelligence and Research Reports: Latin America,

1941-1961; Crises in Panama and the Dominican Republic:

national security files and NSC histories, 1963-1969.

https://www.proquest.com/products-services/film/ Other

publishers have similar collections.

In many countries historians and lawyers have published

collections of key historical documents. While the selection of

what to include is frequently influenced by nationalist political

considerations (which can be an interesting problem to study in

itself), these are often accessible sources of easily read colonial

and nineteenth-century documents. For example, Colección

Somoza: Documentos para la historia de Nicaragua, 17 vols.

Madrid: Imprenta & Litografía Juan Bravo, 1954-57.

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COURSE SCHEDULE AND READINGS

Wed., Jan. 30 — Course Introduction

Wed., Feb. 6 — You can do it!

Bjork-James, Carwil. 2015. “Hunting Indians: Globally

Circulating Ideas and Frontier Practices in the

Colombian Llanos.” Comparative Studies in Society

and History 57 (01): 98–129

Folch, Christine. 2008. “Race in Prerevolution Cuban Cookbooks.” Latin American Research Review 43 (2):

205–23.

Edelman, Marc, and Andrés León. 2013. “Cycles of Land Grabbing in Central America: An Argument for

History and a Case Study in the Bajo Aguán, Honduras.” Third World Quarterly 34 (9): 1697–1722.

THURS., FEB. 7 — Special session 4:00pm, room 9204 GC

Bibliographers from GC Library, New York Public Library, CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, Centro de

Estudios Puertorriqueños, and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (pre-register

bildner@gc.cuny.edu).

Wed., Feb. 13 — A scholarly detective story

Sullivan, Paul R. 2004. Xuxub Must Die: The Lost Histories of a Murder on the Yucatán. Pittsburgh:

University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 978-0822959441

Wed., Feb. 20 — Thinking about sources, archives and “the archive”

Edelman, Marc, and Mitchell A. Seligson. 1994. “Land Inequality: A Comparison of Census Data and

Property Records in Twentieth-Century Southern Costa Rica.” Hispanic American Historical Review 74 (3):

445–91.

Hetherington, Kregg. 2012. “Promising Information: Democracy, Development, and the Remapping of Latin

America.” Economy and Society 41 (2): 127–50.

Kurzwelly, Jonatan “Rex.” 2015. “Encrypting Ethnography: Digital Security for Researchers.” Savage

Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology (blog). October 3, 2015.

http://savageminds.org/2015/10/03/encrypting-ethnography-digital-security-for-researchers/.

Manoff, Marlene. 2004. “Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines.” Libraries and the Academy 4

(1): 9–25.

Putnam, Lara. 2016. “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They

Cast.” The American Historical Review 121 (2): 377–402.

Stoler, Ann Laura. 2002. “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance.” Archival Science 2: 87–109.

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Wed., Feb. 27 — Colonial modernity?

Silverblatt, Irene M. 2004. Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized World.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press (an electronic version of this book is available through the CUNY

Library).

Recommended:

Aguinis, Marcos. 2003. La gesta del

marrano. Buenos Aires: Planeta

English translation: 2018. Against the

Inquisition. Translated by Carolina De

Robertis. No Place: AmazonCrossing.

[an historical novel based on a close

reading of relevant documentary sources].

Wed., March 6 — Preliminary project presentations and joint brainstorming session

Wed., March 13 — Twentieth-century modernity?

Turits, Richard Lee. 2003. Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in

Dominican History. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Recommended:

Alvarez, Julia. 1995. In the Time of the

Butterflies. New York: Plume Books-Penguin.

Vargas Llosa, Mario. 2000. La fiesta del chivo.

Madrid: Santillana. [English translation 2000:

The Feast of the Goat. New York: Picador USA

& Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.]

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Wed., March 20 — The (twisted?) politics of academic journal (and book) publishing and metrics (a

lot of readings here, but most are very short)

AAA. 2016. “Where Can I Publish My Research Article?” American Anthropological Association. 2016.

https://www.americananthro.org/StayInformed/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2153.

Besnier, Niko, and Pablo Morales. 2018. “Tell the Story: How to Write for American Ethnologist.” American

Ethnologist, April. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12629.

Bueter, Ruth. 2018. “Red Flags - Predatory Publishing.” Research Guides at George Washington University.

November 29, 2018. https://libguides.gwumc.edu/PredatoryPublishing/RedFlags.

Dunleavy, Patrick. 2014. “Why Do

Academics Choose Useless Titles for

Articles and Chapters? Four Steps to

Getting a Better Title.” LSE Impact Blog.

February 5.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialscien

ces/2014/02/05/academics-choose-

useless-titles/.

———. 2016. “Thirty One Things to

Consider When Choosing Which Journal

to Submit Your Paper To.” Medium. July

2.

https://medium.com/@write4research/thir

ty-one-things-to-consider-when-

choosing-which-journal-to-submit-your-

paper-to-b353bf2949e1.

Edanz. 2016. “Publishing Point: Promoting Your Published Article.”

https://www.edanzediting.com/blogs/publishing-point-promoting-your-published-article

Graduate Center Library, “Citation Managers & Style Guides.” https://libguides.gc.cuny.edu/citation

Hendry, Andrew. 2015. “How to Respond to Reviewers.” Eco-Evo Evo-Eco. May 26, 2015.

http://ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com/2015/05/how-to-respond-to-reviewers.html.

Hicks, Diana, Paul Wouters, Ludo Waltman, Sarah de Rijcke, and Ismael Rafols. 2015. “Bibliometrics: The

Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics.” Nature 520 (7548): 429–31.

https://www.nature.com/news/bibliometrics-the-leiden-manifesto-for-research-metrics-1.17351.

Oswald, Nick. 2017. “Does Your H-Index Measure Up?” Bitesize Bio. https://bitesizebio.com/13614/does-

your-h-index-measure-up/.

SENSE. 2016. “2016 Ranking of Academic Publishers.” Research School for Socio-Economic and Natural

Sciences of the Environment. https://research.usp.ac.fj/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2016-Ranking-of-

Academic-Publishers.pdf.

Van Noorden, Richard. 2013. “Who Is the Best Scientist of Them All? Online Ranking Compares h-Index

Metrics across Disciplines.” Nature, November. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2013.14108.

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Wed., March 27 — Intersections of Indigenous, Agrarian and Environmental Politics

Grandia, Liza. 2012. Enclosed: Conservation,

Cattle, and Commerce among the Q’eqchi’

Maya Lowlanders. Seattle: University of

Washington Press.

Wed., Apr. 3 — Paper presentations

Wed., Apr. 10 — Struggles in Soylandia

Lapegna, Pablo. 2016. Soybeans and Power: Genetically Modified Crops, Environmental Politics, and Social

Movements in Argentina. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wed., Apr. 17 — NO CLASS. CUNY RECESS.

Wed., May 1 — Paper presentations

Wed., May 8 — Paper presentations

Wed., May 15 — No class, final papers due by email.