The Lived-in Experience of Architecture in New Orleans (2013)

Essays and Watercolor

From Collection: Writing American Cultures: Studies of Identity, Community, and Place

(Evergreen State College Press)

edited by Sam Schrager

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From the introduction by Sam Schrager:

“Melanie Curran, attracted to New Orleans since her early teens, goes there to imbibe its vernacular architecture. She presents her own experiences of buildings that attract her along with some of the intimate and cultural meanings that they hold for folks she happens to meet. Melanie’s poetic takes evoke the atmosphere in these spots and are illustrated by whimsical watercolors.

…

These essays seem to me as rich in insight, and in some respects surpass, what professional ethnographers might be able to uncover. Such a claim, I realize, cuts against the grain of academic wisdom. In American higher education, serious ethnographic research is the bailiwick of advanced practitioners in anthropology and allied disciplines. It is an activity for scholars, graduate degree candidates, and select undergraduate majors. There is a hierarchy of opportunity, involving specialized qualitative training in specific fields. But the training also involves a tradeoff. In adopting disciplinary preoccupations, ethnographers tend to become channeled into conventionalized ways of seeing the topics they study.

This anthology asks: What is the liberating potential for undergraduates engaging in ethnography?”