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Syllabus

Multimodal Ethnography: Experiments, Tools, and Provocations

Note

This sample syllabus is based on the content presented in the open educational resource (OER) Multimodal Ethnography. It is published under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. You are welcome to reuse, remix, revise, and redistribute the material for non-commercial purposes, as long as appropriate credit is given. Please attribute this syllabus in a manner that acknowledges both the original source and any modifications you have made.

Course Format

The course consists of one weekly seminar and one weekly atelier. These may be scheduled on two separate days or held consecutively, with the atelier following the seminar.

Course Description

This course introduces you to multimodal ethnography—a practice that engages multiple media forms and sensory modalities to produce and share ethnographic knowledge. It is grounded in the understanding that anthropological insight is not conveyed through text alone, but also through sensory, affective, spatial, and embodied forms of engagement.

Multimodal ethnography has emerged in response to several pressing concerns: the crisis of representation in anthropology, calls for more decolonial and participatory research practices, and the need to critically engage with media-saturated, platform-mediated, and technologically complex social worlds.

Throughout the course, you will explore how multimodal methods can generate new modes of attention, foster co-presence, and produce situated knowledge that challenges the limits of textual representation. Rather than treating media as neutral tools or supplementary illustrations, we will ask: What kinds of inquiry and representation do different media enable? And how might they reshape conventional research paradigms?

Weekly modules are organized around core methods—including sketching, mapping, digital ethnography, storytelling, letter writing, walking, and sound recording—each explored in terms of its epistemological, political, and ethical stakes. You will engage in hands-on experiments and create multimodal assignments that emphasize process, reflexivity, and methodological innovation.

If the course has course-based ethics approval for human subject research, it will culminate in a final project in which you design and present an original multimodal ethnography. This project should integrate multiple modes of inquiry and reflect critically on their affordances and limitations.

Multimodal ethnography is not simply about adding images or sounds to written text; it is about rethinking the relationships between researcher, participant, medium, and audience. This course invites you to examine those relationships critically and creatively—and to develop your own methodological sensibilities as ethnographers, storytellers, and makers.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

  1. Critically articulate the theoretical foundations and stakes of multimodal ethnography, including its relevance to debates on representation, sensory knowledge, decolonization, and digital life.
  2. Analyze the affordances and limitations of different modes of ethnographic inquiry, such as sketching, mapping, walking, sound, and digital media, in relation to their epistemological, ethical, and political implications.
  3. Demonstrate reflexivity in research practice, including awareness of the relational, situated, and interpretive nature of fieldwork and representation across media.
  4. Experiment with form and composition in ethnographic storytelling, learning how to craft and present anthropological knowledge in multimodal formats that engage diverse audiences.
  5. Evaluate multimodal ethnographic work, including that of peers, by attending to methodological rigor, ethical responsibility, and the integration of form and content.
  6. If the final ethnographic project is included: develop and carry out a small-scale multimodal ethnographic project, using  non-textual modes (e.g., drawing, photography, sound, digital interaction) to explore a fieldsite, theme, or experience.

Weekly Schedule

Chapters of the OER include a list of suggested readings and learning activities. Depending on the level of the course, hours of instruction, and the students’ prior training, these suggestions provide valuable resources for adapting the syllabus to better meet students’ needs.

Week 1 – Introduction to Multimodal Ethnography

What is multimodal ethnography, and why does it matter? Multimodal ethnography refers to the practice of using a range of media—such as video, photography, sound, digital platforms, performance, and interactive forms—to produce and represent ethnographic knowledge. It responds to multiple overlapping crises in anthropology and the social sciences: the crisis of representation, calls for decolonizing knowledge, the limitations of text-based scholarship in capturing sensory, affective, and embodied dimensions of lived experience, and the urgent need to address new forms of life and power emerging in digital and media-saturated contexts. But what does it actually mean to move beyond text in ethnographic research? What kinds of “text” are we being asked to move beyond? The monograph? Language itself? And how might multimodal approaches enable more engaged, participatory, and empathetic modes of knowledge production? These are not merely technical questions but ethical, political, and epistemological ones, asking us to rethink how we know, with whom we know, and how we share what we come to know.

Read (before the seminar):
Discuss (during the seminar):
  • Discussion questions for Chapter 1
Do (during the weekly Atelier):
  • The “Learning by Doing” in Chapter 1. Your instructor may modify the activity by for example, asking you to observe a different short video clip of an everyday social interaction (e.g., people in a café, a street musician, a protest, or a TikTok video). Alternatively, they may ask you to go observe a nearby space for 10 minutes.

Week 2 – Ethnographic Sketches

What kinds of knowledge can drawing produce? This week investigates sketching as a mode of ethnographic attention and inquiry. Unlike photography, which often captures an instant, sketching unfolds over time, requiring the ethnographer to dwell with their subject. This slowness enables a relational encounter—between the ethnographer, the materials, and the world observed—making sketching a form of embodied, situated knowing. But is drawing an observation tool or a speculative one? What happens when we draw things we don’t fully understand? Through practice and discussion, we ask how sketching can generate sensory, affective, and interpretive forms of ethnographic knowledge.

Read (before the seminar):
Discuss (during the seminar):
  • The two discussion question (‘ethnographic drawing vs. photos’ and ‘ethics of ethnographic sketching’) in “Learning Activities” (section 2.4).
  • The discussion question related to “Insights from Experts: Articulating Identity — Cheyanne Brown Armstrong” (section 2.6)
Do (during the weekly Atelier):
  • The ‘Learning by Doing” in “Learning Activities” (section 2.4).

Week 3 – Ethnographic Mapping

How do maps shape what we know about space, and what alternative spatial imaginaries might ethnographic mapping enable? This week focuses on mapping as an active, interpretive practice—not just a way to record locations, but to trace experiences, memories, and social relations. We examine how maps can make visible the politics of space, the rhythms of everyday life, and the entanglements of material and affective environments. At the same time, we interrogate the limitations of conventional cartography and consider counter-mapping practices that foreground mobility, relationality, and situated knowledge.

Read (before the seminar):
  • Required: Chapter 3. Ethnographic Mapping
  • Supplemental: Hunt, Dallas & Stevenson, Shaun. 2017. “Decolonizing Geographies of Power: Indigenous Digital Counter-mapping Practices on Turtle Island”, Settler Colonial Studies, 7 (3): 372-392
Discuss (during the seminar):
  • The ‘Watch and Reflect’ question in “Learning Activities” (section 3.3)
  • The discussion question related to “Insights from Experts: Mapping Worlds – Maya Daurio” (section 3.5)
Do (during the weekly Atelier):
  • The ‘Learning by Doing” in “Learning Activities” (section 3.3).

Week 4 – Digital Ethnography

What does it mean to do ethnography in digital spaces? This week introduces digital ethnography as both a method for studying online social worlds and a mode of research that is itself shaped by digital media. We consider what forms of presence, temporality, and co-presence become possible (or foreclosed) in digital contexts. We also reflect on ethics and positionality in digital fieldwork and explore how digital methods might extend embodied, multisensory ethnography.

Read (before the seminar):
  • Required: Chapter 4. Digital Ethnography
  • Supplemental: Boellstorff, Tom. 2008. “The Subject and Scope of This Inquiry.” In Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, 3–31. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Discuss (during the seminar):
  • The ‘Ethics of Ethnographic Research’ question in “Learning Activities” (section 4.6)
  • The discussion question related to “Insights from Experts: Beyond the Screen – Mahashewta Bhattacharya” (section 4.7)
Do (during the weekly Atelier):
  • The ‘Learning by Doing” in “Learning Activities” (section 4.6)

Week 5 – Ethnographic Storytelling

How do ethnographers tell stories, and what makes a story ethnographic? This week explores storytelling as both method and form in ethnographic research. We examine how narrative structures shape meaning, how stories are situated in power-laden contexts, and how storytelling can function as a relational act. Drawing from feminist and decolonial approaches, we ask how stories can convey not just information, but atmosphere, contradiction, ambiguity, and experience. We consider how to balance narrative voice, responsibility, and representation when crafting ethnographic accounts.

Read (before the seminar):
  • Required: Chapter 5. Ethnographic Storytelling
  • Supplemental: Benjamin, Walter. 2007 [1936]. “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov.” In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York: Schocken Books. 83-109.
Discuss (during the seminar):
  • The ‘(fuzzy) genre borders?’ question in “Learning Activities” (section 5.3)
  • The discussion question related to “Insights from Experts: Illustrating Anthropology – Sophie McKenzie” (section 5.5)
Do (during the weekly Atelier):
  • The ‘Learning by Doing” in “Learning Activities” (section 5.3)

Week 6 – Ethnographic Letters and Postcards

What does it mean to write ethnographically in the second person? This week experiments with letter writing and postcards as forms that collapse distance, evoke intimacy, and foreground the relational nature of ethnographic knowing. These forms disrupt the neutrality of academic voice by positioning the writer in affective and dialogical relation to the reader or field. We consider the political, aesthetic, and epistemological implications of writing as address and reflect on the affordances of epistolary form in capturing subjectivity, temporality, and partial knowing.

Read (before the seminar):
Discuss (during the seminar):

Carefully review the student postcards showcased in Section 6.7. Reflect on your emotional and intellectual response to them. What do these postcards accomplish? What insights do you gain from the field experiences shared by the senders? How do the postcards compare to traditional fieldnotes in tone, content, or purpose? Consider how the medium—a small card with two sides and limited space—shapes what is communicated. What gets included, and what might be left out?

Do (during the weekly Atelier):
  • The ‘Learning by Doing” in “Learning Activities” (section 6.6).
    • Your instructor may ask you to complete a version of the assignment described in Section 6.5.

Week 7 – Walking and Movement in Ethnographic Research

What does it mean to think and sense on the move? Walking has long been part of anthropological fieldwork, but this week foregrounds it as a method in its own right—a way of knowing shaped by rhythm, orientation, and embodied presence. We explore how walking or movement more generally can facilitate relational, dialogic, and sensory engagements with people and places. Walking also unsettles static modes of observation, calling attention to mobility, environment, and the politics of access and belonging.

Read (before the seminar):
Discuss (during the seminar):
  • Listen to the conversation with Gavin Van Horn (linked in section 7.8). Pay attention to Van Horn’s reflections—particularly his embodied engagement with the city, personal journey through urban space, and attention to multispecies presence and discuss the following questions.
    1. How does Gavin Van Horn’s movement through the city—both literal and narrative—function as a mode of inquiry in his work?
      In what ways might walking become a method for attuning to multispecies presence, urban rhythms, and the layered mythologies of place?
    2. Van Horn describes his book as a personal journey through Chicago that blends memoir, mythology, and ecological observation. How might his approach inform ethnographic methods that emphasize embodied movement and place-based storytelling?
      What methodological insights can be drawn from his integration of walking, observation, and imaginative reconstruction?
Do (during the weekly Atelier):
  • The ‘Learning by Doing” and following discussion questions in “Learning Activities” (section 7.5).

Week 8 – Sound in Ethnographic Research

How do we listen ethnographically? This week explores sound as both subject and method of research. Sound is immersive, affective, and ephemeral—qualities that challenge conventional approaches to representation and documentation. We examine how listening can attune the researcher to patterns of social life that escape visual capture and how soundscapes, speech, noise, and silence constitute meaningful elements of everyday worlds. We also consider the ethics of recording, editing, and sharing sound in research.

Read (before the seminar):
Discuss (during the seminar):
  • In what ways does prioritizing auditory experiences challenge dominant visual paradigms in ethnography?
  • Can you identify a research context (e.g., rituals, urban environments, media) where emphasizing sound might reveal different dimensions of culture that visual methods overlook?
  • If you were designing a sound-based ethnographic activity (e.g., collecting field recordings, creating a sound map), what would be your objectives, and what methodological or ethical challenges might arise?
Do (during the weekly Atelier):
  • The soundwalk and following activities in “Learning Activities” (section 8.6)

Weeks 9 through 12 or 13 – Final Project

If the course has ethics approval for course-based human subject research, a few class meetings can be dedicated to discussing students’ ethnographic final projects/mini ethnographic research and presenting their work.

The instructor may also choose to propose a theme (e.g., pop-up culture, transportation) for the projects. A shared theme can help streamline supervision and make final presentations more productive, as students can compare their experiences and consider how their research relates to that of their peers.

The class meetings may include:

Project Proposal Workshop

How do you design a multimodal ethnographic project? This class meeting provides space for you to develop, articulate, and workshop your final project ideas. We focus on formulating research questions, identifying appropriate modes and media, reflecting on ethics and feasibility, and articulating the project’s contribution. Rather than treating the proposal as a plan to execute, we frame it as a generative thinking tool—one that helps clarify intention, positionality, and design.

Read:

  • Review any previous chapters relevant to your planned method(s)

Do:
  • Draft and submit a written project proposal (1,000 words) outlining your topic, research context, modalities to be used, and key methodological and ethical considerations.

Independent Project Development

For one or more weeks we devote our class to fieldwork and project development. You are encouraged to gather material, conduct field visits or online engagements, record media, and begin shaping the form and structure of your project. We’ll hold short check-ins to troubleshoot challenges, share questions, and offer feedback.

Do:

Submit a short progress memo (500 words) with two sample media elements (e.g., a photograph, sketch, sound clip, or draft text excerpt).

Editing and Assembly (in place of or in addition to ‘writing up’)

As your project takes shape, this week supports the process of composing, curating, and refining your multimodal ethnography. We discuss strategies for integrating media, composing narrative arcs, and balancing clarity with ambiguity. We also explore technical and design questions: sequencing, pacing, captioning, accessibility, and format.

Do:

Bring a rough ‘draft’ (not only textual, but visual, tactile, etc.) to class for peer feedback. Use this feedback to revise and prepare for final presentation.

Final Presentations and Reflective Wrap-Up

In our final week, you will present your completed multimodal ethnographic projects. Presentations should reflect on not just the content of the work, but the process: What did the chosen modes make possible? What ethical, practical, or epistemological challenges arose? What did you learn through the doing? We conclude with a group discussion on the future of multimodal ethnography in and beyond the academy.

Do:
  • Final Project (multimodal format; ~3,000–4,000 words equivalent)
  • Reflective Essay (500 words) on the research and composition process
  • 10-minute presentation in class

Evaluation

Suggested Evaluation Breakdown
Component %
Active Participation in Discussions 20%
Weekly Ateliers (8 X 5%) 40%
Final Project Proposal and Check-ins 10%
Final Multimodal Ethnography (including presentation and Reflective essay) 30%
Suggested Rubric for Hands-on Atelier Activities
(Given the variety of activities, not all criteria may apply to every activity)
Criterion Excellent Good Satisfactory Needs Improvement
Engagement & Participation Actively contributes ideas, listens attentively, and responds constructively Participates consistently with relevant contributions Participates irregularly; contributions are occasional or surface‑level Minimal engagement; contributions off-topic or lacking depth
Application of Multimodal Methods Demonstrates creative, adept use of the modality Applies the modality competently with minor inconsistencies Uses multimodal elements but without clear integration Limited or inappropriate use of modalities; lacks cohesion
Ethnographic Insight Shows deep, reflective analysis of context, relationships, and cultural nuances Offers thoughtful observations with some analytical depth Provides descriptive, but not interpretive, ethnographic commentary Observations superficial; lacks analytical reflection
Process Documentation Maintains thorough records: notes, sketches, recordings, reflexive logs Adequate documentation, though some elements may be underdeveloped Basic log exists, but lacks detail or reflexivity Little or no documentation; lacks clarity and completeness
Collaborative Dynamics Actively fosters group collaboration and adapts responsively Works well within group; minor challenges in coordination Cooperates when required; may be passive or misaligned occasionally Dominates without regard or withdraws; teamwork ineffective
Reflection & Iteration Critically reflects on work-in-progress; adjusts approach thoughtfully Reflection present with some adjustments based on feedback Basic reflection but little adaptation Little to no reflection or adaptation; static approach
Suggested Rubric for the Final Project
Criterion Excellent Good Satisfactory Needs Improvement
Research Question & Ethnographic Depth Presents a precise, original research question embedded in rigorous ethnographic context Question is clear and relevant; ethnographic grounding solid, with minor gaps Question acceptable; ethnographic context superficial Question unclear or weak; lacks ethnographic foundation
Multimodal Integration Seamlessly weaves multiple modes into a coherent, enriching multimodal narrative Uses multiple modes effectively, though some interactions are underdeveloped Includes multimodal elements but lacks clear coherence Modalities disconnected or used superficially
Data Collection & Analysis Comprehensive, ethically informed data collection and rigorous analysis Sound collection methods; some analytical gaps Data collection present but limited; analysis basic Poor methodology; little to no analysis
Theoretical & Course Connection Insightful engagement with relevant theory and course materials, integrated thoughtfully Connects theory to practice with minor lapses Mentions theory but engagement is cursory No or minimal theoretical foundation
Communication & Presentation Professional, accessible, polished multimodal presentation of findings Clear presentation with minor style or clarity issues Understandable but lacks polish or may be uneven in some modes Disjointed, unclear, or lacks coherence
Ethical & Reflexive Practice Demonstrates full ethical awareness and reflexivity throughout procedure Addresses ethics and reflexivity with minor omissions Mentions ethics reflexively but superficially Lacks consideration of ethics or reflexivity
Impact & Contribution Makes a compelling, original contribution to ethnographic knowledge/practice Contribution is relevant but less novel Contribution marginal or descriptive No evident contribution; project seems arbitrary