Religious Studies News

I have used various “journal” assignments for an upper-level course, “Ethnography of Religion.” The intention was to have students combine their life experience(s) with short reflection papers, each of which contributed to their becoming novice ethnographers. The first time I assigned a journal entry, I naïvely assumed that students would compose critical, sophisticated analyses of their response to a set of readings. Clearly, my understanding of a “journal” did not match with my students’ ideas. I also learned quickly that a nonguided journal did not reach a key course objective: developing self-reflexive, analytical writing skills. This first experience confirmed common critiques of journal writing: it is too touchy-feely, does not critically engage course content, often overemphasizes student’s opinions, and is therefore overly self-referential. At the same time, several students voiced strong opposition to the amount of writing (two single-spaced typed pages) for each journal. I quickly changed the biweekly journal assignments into “guided journal” writing, and drew from the content of their journals to develop questions for future journals. That is to say, students’ journals were shaping the course in a way that allowed for great flexibility in developing what areas of course content to emphasize. Rather than strictly adhering to the proposed content, then, some readings fell out while others were substituted where appropriate.

When I switched to guided journals, I asked at least one question that required students to connect the readings with their ethnographic field work. Writing this type of highly self-reflective short essay is not simply recording one’s feelings; rather, students connect their field-work experiences with the course readings and in-class discussions, all of which are integrated into the overall course design. I also had students pair up to discuss their completed journals at the beginning of class. These conversations led to lively discussions about how they interpreted readings in radically diverse ways, as well as about the difficulties (and joys) they were experiencing in their field work. By the end of the course, students who had complained about the amount and/or type of writing required by the journals wished they had written more of them.

My choice of reflexive writing stems from the time constraints of teaching both research methods and theories in a single-semester, and having students conduct an ethnographic research project. The “self-reflective turn” in anthropological writing is hardly new, and the text I used can be used outside of ethnographic work for those instructors looking for “writing experiments” (included for each chapter) that develop writing skills (Goodall). However, that style of writing can develop writing skills that are transferable to other courses. These restrictions force me to focus on a small slice of what surely could (or should) be a two-part course. Many students comment at the end that they wished they had time to spend another semester on their projects. This emphasis does not do justice to the variety of ethnographic methods, nor does it introduce students to the anthropology of religion more broadly conceived.

For some journals, I would have students “experience” what they were only later to read about how to do; for example, without any guidance I had them attend a religious service other than their own (if they went to one) and then as soon as they left, write down everything that came to mind. After that, we discussed their responses in class. We then read about how to take field notes and what participant observation entails. To prepare them for interviews, I had them pair up in class and interview one another without any specific instruction; we then read about conducting interviews. The journal for this phase involved reflecting on what they had learned through the process — from no guidance in class — to reading and then actually doing an interview. The learning process was in this case reinforced by the field experience. This journal, then, led to further questions, which then fed into the next phase of the course. That is, the scaffolding of the course led students through various methods of research that helped them reach a metacognitive analysis of their learning. By the end of the course, several students reluctantly admitted in a final journal that they wished they had written a journal every week.