Writing Anthropology

Carole McGranahan is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado, author of Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War, and coeditor of Ethnographies of U.S. Empire, both also published by Duke University Press.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. On Writing and Writing Well: Ethics, Practice, Story / Carole McGranahan  1
Section I. Ruminations
1. Writing in and from the Field / Ieva Jusionyte  23
2. List as Form: Literary, Ethnographic, Long, Short, Heavy, Light / Sasha Su-Ling Welland  28
3. Finding Your Way / Paul Stoller  34
4. The Ecology of What We Write / Anand Pandian  37
5. When Do Words Count? / Kirin Narayan  41
Section II. Writing Ideas
6. Read More, Write Less / Ruth Behar  47
7. Pro Tips for Academic Writing / C. Anne Claus  54
8. My Ten Steps for Writing a Book / Kristen R. Ghodsee  58
9. Slow Reading / Michael Lambek  62
10. Digging with the Pen: Writing Archaeology / Zoë Crossland  66
Section III. Telling Stories
11. Anthropology as Theoretical Storytelling / Carole McGranahan  73
12. Beyond Thin Description: Biography, Theory, Ethnographic Writing / Donna M. Goldstein  78
13. Can't Get There from Here? Writing Place and Moving Narratives / Sarah Besky  83
14. Ethnographic Writing with Kirin Narayan: An Interview / Carole McGranahan  87
15. On Unreliable Narrators / Sienna R. Craig  93
Section IV. On Responsibility
16. In Dialogue: Ethnographic Writing and Listening / Marnie Jane Thomson  101
17. Writing with Community / Sara L. Gonzalez  104
18. To Fieldwork, to Write / Kim Fortun  110
19. Quick, Quick, Slow: Ethnography in the Digital Age / Yarimar Bonilla  118
20. That Generative Space between Ethnography and Journalism / Maria D. Vesperi  121
Section V. The Urgency of Now
21. Writing about Violence / K. Drybread  127
22. Writing about Bad, Sad, Hard Things / Carole McGranahan  131
23. Writing to Live: On Finding Strength While Watching Ferguson / Whitney Battle-Baptiste  134
24. Finding My Muse While Mourning / Chelsi West Ohueri  137
25. Mourning, Survival, and Time: Writing Through Crisis / Adia Benton  140
Section VI. Writing With, Writing Against
26. A Case for Agitation: On Affect and Writing / Carla Jones  145
27. Antiracist Writing / Ghassan Hage  149
28. Writing with Love and Hate / Bhrigupati Singh  153
29. Peer Review: What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger / Alan Kaiser  158
30. When They Don't Like What We Write: Criticism of Anthropology as a Diagnostic of Power / Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar  163
Section VII. Academic Authors
31. Writing Archaeology "Alone," or a Eulogy for a Codirector / Jane Eva Baxter  169
32. Collaboration: From Different Throats Intone One Language? / Matt Sponheimer  173
33. What Is and (Academic) Author? / Mary Murrell  178
34. The Writing behind the Written / Noel B. Salazar  182
35. It's All "Real" Writing / Daniel M. Goldstein  185
36. Dr. Funding or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Grant Writing / Robin M. Bernstein  188
Section VIII. Ethnographic Genres
37. Poetry and Anthropology / Nomi Stone  195
38. "SEA" Stories: Anthropologies and Poetries beyond the Human / Stuart McLean  201
39. Dilations / Kathleen Stewart and Lauren Berlant  206
40. Genre Bending, or the Love of Ethnographic Fiction / Jessica Marie Falcone  212
41. Ethnographic Fiction: The Space Between / Roxanne Varzi  220
42. From Real Life to the Magic of Fiction / Ruth Behar  223
Section IX. Becoming and Belonging
43. On Writing from Elsewhere / Uzma Z. Rizvi  229
44. Writing to Become . . . / Sita Venkateswar  234
45. Unscholarly Confessions on Reading / Katerina Teaiwa  239
46. Guard Your Heart and Your Purpose: Faithfully Writing Anthropology / Bianca C. Williams  246
47. Writing Anthropology and Such, or "Once More, with Feeling" / Gina Athena Ulysse  251
48. The Anthropology of Being (Me) / Paul Tapsell  256
Section X. Writing and Knowing
49. Writing as Cognition / Barak Kalir  263
50. Thinking Through the Untranslatable / Kevin Carrico  266
51. Freeze-Dried Memory Crumbs: Field Notes from North Korea / Lisa Sang Mi Min  270
52. Writing the Disquiets of a Colonial Field / Ann Laura Stoler  274
53. On Ethnographic Unknowability / Catherine Besteman  280
Bibliography  283
Contributors  293
Index  305