OSEA: Field Study Abroad and Ethnography Field School: OSEA offers 4 and 6 week training programs in Interdisciplinary Ethnography. Areas of student training include ethnography Archaeology, Heritage, Tourism Studies. Student participants gain field experience in designing and conducting ethnographic research in areas of Maya Health and Healing, traditional belief, sustainable community tourism, politics of art and tourist art, performative ethnography and experimental methods. OSEA focuses on Maya culture and civilization. Tourism, Anthropology of Art, performance theory, ethnographic archaelogy, ethnography of archaeology, field study abroad, Maya Riviera, Tulum, Chichen Itza, Cancun, Playa del Carmen. Learn about Maya World. Museum studies of the Maya, Maya art, Modern Maya art, traditional culture, Indigenous culture, Indigenous politics, anthropology of identity politics, multiculturalism, community action research, participatory research, participatory anthropology, teaching English TESOL, Second Language learning L2 learners, heritage language pedagogies, Mayan language. UNESCO Heritage Sites. New Seven Wonders of the World. Mexico, Chichen Itza. OSEA-CITE: Ethnography of Archaeology Ethnographic Archaeology Archaeological Ethnography Experimental Ethnography, ethnographic installation, ethics of ethnography, ethnographic ethics, Emmanuel Levinas, Double Sensation, Expanded Documentation, Experimental Ethnography, Quetzil Castaneda, Juan Castillo Cocom, Maya Culture, Mayan Civilization, Maya Riviera, Yucatan, Mexico, Community Action Research, Ethnographic Installation, Maya Calendar, Maya 2012, Chilam Balam, Ah Dzib, Second Language Studies, Second Language Learning, Bilingual Education, anthropology of Art, anthropology of Tourism, the Maya World, Cancun, Merida, Playa del Carmen, Tourism studies, Medical anthropology, Maya healing and ritual, Field Study Abroad, Latin American Studies, Valladolid, Chichen Itza, Tulum, Ek Balam, Piste, Travel Mexico, Tourism Development, Ethics of tourism.

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OSEA Field Study Abroad Programs in Mexico

 

Overview:     OSEA Field Study Abroad Training Programs

OSEA offers two sets of programs under Ethnography Field School and SELT.

Ethnography Field School is an intensive, on-site fieldwork program that provides training in ethnography. Ethnography is based in on-site participation, cultural immersion, interviewing, observation, and visual research methods as way to investigate issues and problems of medical anthropology, cultural change, globalization, tourism anthropology, heritage studies, anthropology of food, sustainability, sex/gender identities and subjectivities, indigeneity, community action research, public health, spiritualities and religion, subcultures, ritual and performance. OSEA tailors the program to suit the needs and interests of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as professionals and other persons who are not students who have a need to develop new skills in interdisciplinary research methodologies. OSEA training programs are designed to be flexible while retaining a structure for hands-on, interactive learning for small groups. OSEA Ethnography Field School offers 4 Week and 6 Week programs.

SELT — The School of Experimental Language Training — is a division within OSEA that provides different programs related to Spanish, English and Maya Through SELT we offer short one to two week intenstive courses in Spanish that are designed to help participants gain the necessary language proficiency for their ethnography immersion and research experience. As well SELT course offerings include the unique intensive Maya language learning program and the Teach English Service Learning in which participants provide the Maya children of the community the opportunity to learn English using performative pedagogies.

 


 

Ethnography Field School (Six or Four Week Programs)
Participants are trained to design and conduct ethnpgraphy projects.
Choose to work in one of three research areas:

      ⇒ Tourism Ethnography: Sustainability, Heritage & Community

      ⇒ Emergent Cultures, Cosmopolitanism, Cultural Change

      ⇒ Health, Healing and Belief Research

 

SELT — School of Experimental Language Training

      ⇒ Intensive Maya Language Immersion — personalized training ideal for researchers

      ⇒ Intensive Spanish Two week course for Middle Novice and higher

      ⇒ Teach English Service Learning — Community Action Research. not available 2019

We are looking for highly motivated, creative, and flexible persons with a variety of skills, experience, training, and interest not just in cultural anthropology and ethnography, but in any one or more of: photography, video, visual anthropology, theatre arts, staging design, installation, invisible theatre, performance art, studio art, Maya cultures, México and Latin America, Indigenous peoples, history, ethnohistory, art history, epigraphy, archeology, cultural studies, writing, journalism, tourism, museum studies, ESL, multicultural education, critical pedagogy, anthropology of education. This program is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students of all levels as well as persons who are not currently in enrolled in a degree granting program.

Check Program Dates & Details via links in Top Nav Bar Tabs!

 


 

OSEA is organized into the Ethnography Field School and the SELT language programs
Links to Sections on this paget:

      ☑ Spanish Language Requirements

      ☑ Cultural Immersion Activities in Program Community

      ☑ Program Activities / Field Trips

 


 

Common Questions:
What is Field Study versus Study Abroad?
What is Service Learning?
What is Ethnography?
What is Heritage?

Learn About Previous OSEA Field School Programs (below)


 

Check the weather in Valladolid, 30 mins from OSEA program location in Pisté and Chichén

On the correct use of the words "Maya" and "Mayan"

 


 

OSEA Ethnography Programs Require Spanish Proficiency
Spanish proficiency is required to be able to have the best learning and field experience possible. We accept persons based on their self-assessment and external evaluation of your Spanish Proficiency. The specific coursework you may have had in terms of extensive high school classes with or without additional college level Spanish is not as significant as these evaluations. You need to be able to have more than a little of basic communicative skills.

If your Spanish level can use a boost, please consider taking intensive Spanish courses prior to program start. You may enroll in Spanish courses at your university or online during the spring semester prior to arrival or during the break between regular semester and the OSEA ethnography program. We encourage you to consider the OSEA Intensive Spanish 7 and 12 courses. These are competitively priced especially to attract osea participants. We will focus your learning to best suit your needs within contexts of low student to teacher ratios. Typically these classes have can be as few as 1 to a maximum of 4 persons. This is ideal for you to learn.

OSEA Intensive Spanish Courses

Spanish is not an eligibility requirement for the Intensive Maya Immersion Program. Immersion in Maya is more successful without code switching to Spanish. Thus, high levels of Spanish proficiency may actually impede your success without dedication to avoid using Spanish. Learning Maya is facilitated by some second language learning experience of a foreign language or even a heritage language.

 

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Cultural Immersion Activities in OSEA Pogram Fieldsite Community:
Dances, Communions, and Clausuras
The summer is filled with various types of cultural events and activities. For example, the nearby community of Chendzonot celebrates its patron saint day at the end of June. Many families take their homestay students to the dance or may go with other students. The first weeks of July are filled with the clausuras or graduation ceremonies for the 5-6 different kindergarten, middle school and high schools in Piste. Student are often also invited by their homestay families to go to clausuras in Valladolid. The third week of July is filled with First Communion parties. The OSEA programs end with our OSEA Clausura in which over a 100 persons from all host families and other community friends participate.

In addition, during the summer, participants join their homestay families to attend the parties of their extended family or friends. These "private" events are to celebrate birthdays, weddings, and novenas, whether for saints or on occassion of anniversaries of the passing away of loved ones. Even if your family is not invited, you can also be invited based on the social network that you create to conduct your research. Piste persons are warm, open, and love intercultural exchange-- many persons will invite you to attend their party if you seek to initiate a friendship with them. In short, the ritual calendar of the summer can be quite exhaustive!

In 2016 we initiated a tradition to go as a group to swim at Yokdzonot Cenote on the Saturday morning after the OSEA Clausura. In order to participate in this, we recommend that you schedule your return flight to the Sunday after the program end date.

 

Educational Excursions and Culture Field Trips
Training programs include educational trips to nearby cultural, educational and tourism sites of attraction. There is a group trip to Chichen Itza the first weekend of the program. The nearby community of Chendzonot celebrates its patron saint day at the end of June. Field trips can also include Yokdzonot Cenote, Yaxunah ruins, Yaxuna pueblo. The Seven week program typically includes a full day trip to the Pink Flamingos and salt baths at Rio Lagartos, Tihosuco and the Caste War Ruta de las Iglesias, Ek Balam, or Izamal. Students often travel with their families or with other students for half day trips to Valladolid. As well, students may also decide to travel to nearby communities, such as Dzitas, San Francisco, Xocenpich, Kaua, or Yaxcaba, to conduct interviews or observations for their specific research project. Group trips, but not individual travel, are covered by program costs and specific trips can vary each year to take advantage of learning opportunities.

 

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Learn About Previous OSEA Field School Programs

Who Should Consider OSEA Programs?
We are looking for highly motivated, creative, and flexible persons with a variety of skills, experience, training, and interest.

Successful participants in OSEA Ethnographic Training Programs are persons who study or have significant experience in cultural anthropology, photography, video, visual anthropology, theatre arts, staging design, installation, invisible theatre, performance art, studio art, Maya cultures, México and Latin America, Indigenous peoples, history, ethnohistory, art history, epigraphy, archeology, cultural studies, writing, journalism, tourism, museum studies, ESL, multicultural education, critical pedagogy, anthropology of education and the anthropology of art, medical anthropology.

Our programs are appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students of all levels as well as persons who have just completed a degree and seek additional fieldwork experience and training before continuing on to a graduate degree program or to a professional position

Training with OSEA provides you tools, experiences, understandings & methods on which you will continue to rely long into the future

 


 

The OSEA experience will make a difference in your life

Visitors to OSEA, starting November 2, 2014




 

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