Suchergebnisse

"Containing personal stories, ethnography, and reflective essays, Somalis in Maine explores the unique cross-cultural interactions and collaborations between Somali refugees and Americans in the town of Lewiston, Maine"--Provided by publisher

The author addresses the development and implementation of a service-learning project for an undergraduate course in which students interview immigrant women, incorporate the interviewees' experiences into an analytical paper, and present the findings at the end of the semester. Students are required to use C. Wright Mills's concepts of history and biography by situating the stories told by the women within the larger sociohistorical contexts in which they live. The article proceeds in four sections. The first section provides an overview of service learning and its benefits. This is followed by a detailed description of the service-learning project. In the third section, the author draws from a postclass survey, course evaluations, and her observations to illustrate the ways in which the project enhances student learning and enables students to deepen their understanding of the sociological imagination. The article concludes with suggestions for how the project can be applied in other courses.

In 1988, Judith Stacey posed the provocative question: "Can there be a feminist ethnography?" In doing so, she challenged widely held assumptions about feminist ethnography by pointing out that qualitative research methods do not necessarily mitigate the dangers of exploitation in research. Almost two decades later, the issues Stacey raised continue to receive considerable attention from feminist scholars. This article adds to this body of literature by examining the dynamics of reciprocity and positionality in research. Drawing from research conducted with Bosnian Muslim refugees, the author outlines three tensions she experienced and addresses how these tensions were related to her shifting and sometimes contradictory positionalities as a woman, a researcher, a friend, a graduate student, and as a person who was straddled between two classes. This is followed by a discussion about the lessons learned and the way the experiences shaped her current collaborative, community‐based research project with Somali refugees.