Spring Writer’s Workshop
Summer Field School
Winter Quarter Program
OSEA Courses
Transfer of OSEA Credits
Concurrent Enrollment
Frequently Asked Questions
 
Courses

Course Overview
OSEA offers a set of Core Courses in Anthropology, Ethnography, Fieldwork, and Independent Field Research. The precise topics and number of hours varies according to the specific OSEA Training Program. Participants are expected to seriously engage in the academic components of the Program by reading, writing, and preparing discussion.

Course Title Level Content Hours

Intensive, Intermediate & Advanced Spanish

2-3rd yr to Adv

Spanish Language

variable

Beginning Spoken Maya

1st year

Yucatec Maya language

variable

Seminars in Anthropology

3-4th yr & Grad

Maya culture, history

variable

Seminars in Ethnography

3-4th yr & Grad

Fieldwork Methods, ethics, analysis

variable

Fieldwork Research 3-4th yr & Grad Independent project variable

Workshops in Ethnographic Fieldwork

3-4th yr & Grad

Supervised Forum Discussion of Student Research Projects

variable

OSEA reserves the right to substitute faculty with the appropriate experiences and credentials when necessary to support the program’s objectives and mission.


Course Descriptions
Seminars in Anthropology
Seminars have different topical and thematic focus. These courses provide students with foundation knowledge about the histories, cultures, civilizations, and peoples of Yucatán. Topics include: Precolumbian Maya Civilization, Spanish Colonization and Colonialism; Yucatec Maya Identities and Ethnicities; Economy of Yucatán; Maya Peoples and Culture; Tourism Development; New Age Maya Religions; Cultural Ecology; Maya Healing and Ritual; and Contemporary Maya Identity Politics. This seminar also treats contemporary issues in anthropology, theory of culture, interdisciplinary cultural studies, and related fields.

Seminars include field trips/tours of Chichén Itzá and other cultural sites of anthropological significance. The January programs include participation in the religious festival of the Three Kings in Tizimin, and the traditional Maya festival of the Kotz Kal Dzó in Dzitás. Winter and Spring Semester Programs include participation in the Equinox Ritual of Chichén.

Readings may include: the Special Issue of the Journal of Latin American Anthropology on Maya Identity; selections from Robert Redfield’s Chan Kom; Betty Faust’s Mexican Rural Development and the Feathered Serpent; Hervik’s Mayan Within and Beyond Boundaries; and the journal articles: Castillo Cocom “Maya PRInces in YucaPAN”; Castañeda “Approaching Ruins, New and Old Social Movements; Arnold Strickon “Hacienda and Plantation in Yucatán”; Morris Steggerda “Maya Medical Remedies”; Redfield and Redfield “Disease and its Treatment in Dzitás”; chapter on Yucatán in “Birth in Four Cultures”; Evaluation of student success in learning is based on active participation in seminar and brief essays based on questions about the readings.

Seminars in Ethnography
Seminars have different topical and thematic focus. These courses provide students with the foundations of research methods and fieldwork in ethnography. Topics include: the nature and agenda of ethnography; ethics, politics, epistemology of ethnographic representation; research design and the formulation of research problems; methods of ethnographic fieldwork; concepts, principles and procedures of doing fieldwork; collecting information and analyzing data. Students are trained in the use of specific methods (interviewing, participation, observation, setting up research encounters, strategic research design, creation of research problems); objectivism and subjectivism; description and analysis; field notes and documentation; participant observation: performativity; bodies & gestures; staging and scenography; modes of interviewing; therapeutic function of fieldwork; invisible theatre: research design; ethnographic installation, elicitation and trigger; data collection, preservation, analysis.

Readings include: selections from Russell Bernard, Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology and Research Methods in Anthropology; Norman Denzin, Interpretive Interactionism; Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology; George Marcus, Ethnography Through Thick and Thin; Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies.

Evaluation of student success in learning is based on active participation in seminar and the preparation of an independent student research project that the student will carry out. Emphasis is given on the formulation of research problem of study and the design of ethnographic fieldwork by which those issues are investigated.

Workshop on Ethnographic Fieldwork
This course is a workshop conducted concurrently with the independent fieldwork period. Students return from their field sites to Pisté to participate. Activities include presentation of research problems, results, processes, dynamics, and activities. Function of workshop is to ensure adequate supervision of projects as well as provide students a regular forum to share with other students their ongoing research. Thus, students also learn basics of formal and informal presentation of materials.

Independent Field Research
These projects are determined on site in relation to the students interests and goals. Although students are strongly guided and supervised in their formulation of research design and conduct, students have the fullest range possible for selecting their research issues and themes. All projects however require the Staff approval in order to be actualized and OSEA reserves the final right of authorization or denial of projects conducted by its students.

The Seminar in Ethnography provides the basis for the independent student projects that comprise the work for the course Fieldwork Research. These projects are designed by the students with close supervision by the OSEA staff and are conducted in Pisté. In addition to the independent research, students participate in an workshop in which students present their activities, difficulties, successes, and thoughts to each other. Evaluation of student success in learning is based not only the elicitation information and collection of data, but the written presentation of these in typed transcripts, fieldnotes, and final written reports.

Intensive & Immersive Language Courses
Spanish and Yucatec Maya
The intensive training in Spanish and Yucatec Maya is at intermediate and beginning level respectively. Teaching methods include hands-on, interactive assignments modeled on “Reality-TV” team-competition games. Evaluation of learning is primarily based on student ability to successfully interact with and engage persons in their native languages of Spanish and Maya. Students are frequently assigned interactive tasks as part of the practicum of language immersion. The language learning is not the primary goal and activity of OSEA Programs. The intensive training has the objective of preparing students for total language immersion in the bi-lingual life-world of Yucatán in order to conduct ethnographic research.