Abstract
Ethnographic journaling can provide students with powerful opportunities to recognize and value their individual and collective perspectives as both observers and analysts of the world around them, especially in times of crisis. In this Perspectives essay, we share our experiences of using the Pandemic Journaling Project platform as a teaching resource in the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. We consider various aspects of online ethnographic journaling, including creative teaching strategies, journaling’s therapeutic potential, and student perspectives on the opportunity to document their own experiences as a forward-looking form of “archival activism.” We also discuss how journaling can create robust ethnographic learning opportunities while at the same time providing a valuable space for connection and social support, especially when classroom dynamics are constrained by crisis conditions. Ethnographic journaling can help students appreciate what it means for ethnographers to bring their whole selves into their qualitative work in ways that can challenge mainstream misconceptions and contribute concrete forms of data and ethnographic insight. Overall, the essay explores how ethnographic journaling can create meaningful and creative opportunities for curricular innovation; generate durable forms of ethnographic insight; and also bring student experiences into the classroom in ways that can help them cultivate their voice, build a sense of solidarity, and potentially ease student distress.
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Notes
Teens aged 15–17 needed permission of a parent or guardian to participate.
Links to media coverage are available on PJP’s Media page https://pandemic-journaling-project.chip.uconn.edu/media-2-3/.
In summer 2022, PJP entered a second phase (PJP-2) that aims to chart the pandemic’s long-term impact by reaching out to participants just four times a year. In addition, the PJP team is conducting several targeted research studies using adapted forms of the PJP platform (for instance, to explore the impact of COVID-19 on 1) women's reproductive health; 2) immigrant women in New York City; 3) Black women's experiences of stress and cardiovascular risk; and 4) the potential therapeutic value of online journaling). In 2022–2023, the team also launched an international exhibition, Picturing the Pandemic: Images from the Pandemic Journaling Project (https://picturingthepandemic.org/) in collaboration with curator and art historian Alexis L. Boylan and local collaborators in each site. So far, the exhibition has traveled to four cities in three countries.
While SSW first experimented with ethnographic journaling in a Spring 2020 seminar of five female-identifying students (four of whom identify as white; several of whom identify as queer; and most of whom are from the U.S. East Coast). KB and MEM engaged with PJP once it was up and running, and their students reflected the average student demographics at their respective institutions, according to institutional statistics. KB’s students (n = ∼225) were enrolled in nine sections of “Introduction to Urban Community Health,” a 200-level undergraduate course at Guttman College that was taught online (both asynchronous (n = 6) and synchronous (n = 3) sections) from June 2020 to December 2021. Of students at Guttman, 95% are 21 and under; nearly all are non-white (58% Hispanic, 29% Black, 5% Asian); most are urban residents (Bronx 34%, Brooklyn 23%, Manhattan 22%, Queens 14%); and nearly two-thirds are first generation (62%). MEM’s students (n = ∼137) were enrolled in five sections of “Introduction to Cultural Anthropology” at Skidmore College. Each section used a hybrid mode with sessions on Zoom and in-person with masks and social distancing. On average, students at Skidmore are under 20; residential (90% live on campus); white (63% white, 26% persons of color); higher-income (about 45% do not receive financial aid); with college-educated parents (13% first-generation); and from the northeastern U.S. (30% New York, 44% other northeastern states, 17% other U.S. regions, and 9% non-residents of the U.S.).
The panel, “The Pandemic Journaling Project: Digital Journaling during COVID-19,” was organized by Sarah Willen and Alice Larotonda.
For a list of PJP Student Advisory Board members, see the PJP team webpage: https://pandemic-journaling-project.chip.uconn.edu/our-team/.
Baines discussed this classroom experience on the podcast “A Partial Perspective”: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/6-dr-kristina-baines-on-cool-anthropology-and-the/id1478055029?i=1000485854052/.
See previous footnote.
https://picturingthepandemic.org/.
For instance, we developed a procedure to screen PJP journal entries for keywords that might signal serious mental distress and, if necessary, reach out directly to participants.
The idea for this assignment comes from historian Nancy Jacobs via anthropologist Katherine Mason, both contributors to this special issue.
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Acknowledgments
First and foremost, we would like to thank our students for learning and sharing with us during what may have been the most challenging period for teaching and learning in their lifetimes, and in ours. We would also like to thank PJP co-founder Katherine A. Mason; PJP postdoctoral fellow Heather M. Wurtz; former PJP postdoctoral fellow Alice Larotonda, who co-organized the 2021 Society for Applied Anthropology Meetings (SfAA) session at which we began to develop many of the ideas reflected in this essay; participants in that early SfAA panel; and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Finally, we would like to thank the global community of journalers who took time in the midst of crisis to share their pandemic experiences on the PJP platform.
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Willen, S.S., Baines, K. & Ennis-McMillan, M.C. Cultivating Voice and Solidarity in Times of Crisis: Ethnographic Online Journaling as a Pedagogical Tool. Cult Med Psychiatry 48, 45–65 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-023-09832-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-023-09832-6