New OSEA Programs for 2009

1. Summer I Heritage Ethnography Field School
2. Summer II MIRA Field School
3. Maya Equinox Workshop

OSEA Program in Heritage Ethnography
This OSEA program links two dynamic and emergent fields of study — the ethnography of heritage and the ethnography of archaeology — into one five-star package for practitioners and students of all levels and experience. The core seminar in this program provides the conceptual and analytical foundations for understanding the global significance and processes of heritage in today’s increasingly interconnected world. Additional courses provide language training and research practicum in which participants design and conduct a research project. Collaborative team work among program participants and action-based research involving communities are encouraged. Ideal for undergraduate students in any cultural studies field and for archaeology graduate students currently working on an archaeology project in Yucatan. Special Maya language course available for FLAS recipients and for archaeologists seeking high level of communicative fluency with Maya communities and stake-holders.

Summer I:  A 7 week program from mid-May to late June/early July.
Tentative Dates:  2008 May 14-July 2.  2009 May 13-July 1. 2010 May 12-June 30
Location:  Yucatán Peninsula.  Based in Mérida and Pisté.  Additional sites are selected by each student for their ethnographic fieldwork project. Independent research sites are communities near on-going archaeological research projects, archaeological tourism destinations, or historical restoration sites within urban or rural contexts.
Credits:  9 credit hours, at undergraduate or graduate level.
Cost:        TBA
Courses:
3 credits “Seminar in Heritage Ethnography: Archaeological Ethnography”
3 credits “Ethnography Methods and Field Research Practicum”
3 credits “Conversational Maya Language for Fieldwork”
Requirements:  Minimum 1 year of college level Spanish or demonstrated equivalent proficiency.  GPA of 3.0 if currently a student and completion of freshman year of college/university or equivalent.
Eligibility:  Program is open to Undergraduate majors and Graduate students in any social science, art, culture, communications, and applied research fields as well as to post-degree participants that seek intensive training in ethnographic field methods and a research practicum in heritage.
Description: 
The program begins with an intensive language training that provides participants the linguistic skills to be able to conduct fieldwork in Maya communities in one of three primary heritage domains, archaeological, cultural (intangible), and environmental.  The focus in this program is on archaeological heritage in relation to archaeology, tourism development, and community engagement.  The timing of this program is designed to take advantage of the usual field season for archaeology (spring through mid-summer).  Based on prior arrangements with archaeologist working in the Yucatán Peninsula, we will be able to visit a few of the many ongoing or recently completed archaeological research projects.  Typically participants will design an ethnography project that attends to any of the many issues involving the social contexts of archaeology, archaeological heritage and meanings of the past, the political economy of archaeological tourism, and cultural revitalization and community development. 

MIRA Project in Comparative Tourism Destinations
This field school provides training in the anthropology of tourism with focus on visual ethnography to explore practices of tourism consumption, interactions among consumers and providers, production and structuring of tourism, visual cultures, constructions of identity and heritage, tourism motivations and experiences, space and performativity, race, class, sex/gender strategies and ideologies in the production of tourism satisfaction, pleasure economies, labor systems and tourism work.  Our focus is to create comprehensive understanding of the regional network of destinations at the same time as we explore the specific structuring of situated tourism assemblages of experience-commodities.

Summer II:  A 6 week program from mid-July to third week August.
Tentative Dates:  2008 July 13-Aug 24.  2009 July 12-Aug 23. 2010 July 11-Aug 22.
Location:  Yucatán Peninsula.  Based in Mérida, Playa del Carmen, Pisté and Chichén Itzá.  Additional sites may include Tulum, Uxmal, Coba, Cancun.
Credits:  8 credit hours, at undergraduate or graduate level.
Cost:        TBA
Courses: 
4 credits “Anthropology of Tourism”
4 credits “Visual Ethnography Methods and Field Research”
Requirements:  Minimum 1 year of college level Spanish or demonstrated equivalent proficiency.  GPA of 3.0 if currently a student and completion of freshman year of college/university or equivalent.
Eligibility:  Program is open to Undergraduate majors and Graduate students in any social science, art, culture, communications, and applied research fields as well as to non-degree participants that seek intensive training in ethnography field methods and a research practicum in heritage.
Description: For more information see MIRA main page