Ethnography of the University

The University of Toronto is a microcosm of society, with its large and diverse population of students, staff and faculty; its hierarchies and habits; and the relations of power and meaning that shape everyday practices in classrooms, labs, dining halls, offices, clubs, and residence corridors. Exclusion, fashion, friendship, sex, competition, religion, bureaucracy, fear, faith, education - everything happens in a university.

In Fall 2011 ten undergrads in anthropology enrolled in this course (ANT480) where they conducted ethnographic research on some aspect of university life, following a model pioneered by the Ethnography of the University project at the University of Illinois http://www.eui.illinois.edu/

Below are links to samples of the students' research.

An Orientation Toward Pleasure: Cultivating Comfort at SEC by Jane Doe

Hazel McCallion Academic Learning Centre by Declan Driscoll

Structuring Hierarchy: Exclusionary Practices at the Hot Yam Collective by Martyna Krezel

Ethnography of Caffiends: Can Exclusive be Inclusive? by Kate Morris

Discourses of Divinity: Secularism and Religion in the University by Dominic Nodalo

Social Distance and Fantasy in a Campus Cafeteria by Christopher Ross

Women Undergraduate Engineering Students - Striving to Become Flexible, Well-Rounded Female Engineers by Lynne Slater

Third Way in the Post Third-Way Age: Community Building of ASA and Beyond by Fan Zhang