It started as a class project--a young, married, small-town white woman interviewing a gay acquaintance and his circle of friends. From this developed a three-year exploration of the complexities of carrying on gay-straight friendships. This reflexive, thoughtful, and compellingly written study moves from gay bars to softball leagues to visits with families and friends, both gay and straight. During its course, the author develops a growing understanding of the differences between the two communities, the difficulties of developing bonds across groups, and the inherent rewards of seeking (and...

Pelias (Southern Illinois U., Carbondale) takes on the soul, spirituality, and heart he finds absent but potentially present in the academy. Openly subjective, Pelias examines how over-confidence in objectivity crushes alternative thinking, especially in members of minority groups. He advocates examining the missing essence of the body and making i

Education without ethics, without sentiments, without heart, is simply soulless, factual academics and nothing more. This work features essays that poetically evokes the spiritual aspects of life in a seemingly dispassionate field.

In Travels with Ernest: Crossing the Literary/Sociological Divide, Laurel Richardson and Ernest Lockridge_accomplished sociologist and published novelist_explore the fascinating interplay between literary and ethnographic writing. The exciting result is an intriguing experimental text that simultaneously delves into, reveals, simplifies, and complicates methodologies of writing and conveying experience. Refusing to force their unique voices into one integrated account, the authors_also spouses_explicate their stories in separate narratives and then discuss in transcribed 'free-wheeling'...

Calling on a decade of participant observation at a residence for mentally retarded adults, anthropologist Michael V. Angrosino's riveting and de-mystifying account offers an insider's picture of the lives of the inhabitants of Opportunity House. Using the narrative device of a dozen fictional short stories told in the voices of various community members as well as that of the researcher, Angrosino weaves a life-histories approach to ethnography together with an innovative culture concept to tackle the complexities of representing marginalized subgroups. As opposed to traditional clinical or...

"My mind refuses to play its part in the scholarly exercise. I walk around in a daze, remembering occasionally to take a picture. I've heard that many people cry here, but I am too numb to feel. The wind whips through my wool coat. I am very cold, and I imagine what the wind would have felt like for someone here fifty years ago without coat, boots, or gloves. Hours later as I write, I tell myself a story about the day, hoping it is true, and hoping it will make sense of what I did and did not feel." --From the Foreword Most of us learn of Auschwitz and the Holocaust through the writings of...

What is it like to have lived with bulimia for most of your life? To have a mother who is retarded? To fight a health insurance company in order to survive breast cancer? This title tackles questions such as these. It demonstrates how ethnographic data can be converted into memorable experiences that readers can use in the classroom.

'My mind refuses to play its part in the scholarly exercise. I walk around in a daze, remembering occasionally to take a picture. I've heard that many people cry here, but I am too numb to feel. The wind whips through my wool coat. I am very cold, and I imagine what the wind would have felt like for someone here fifty years ago without coat, boots, or gloves. Hours later as I write, I tell myself a story about the day, hoping it is true, and hoping it will make sense of what I did and did not feel.' _From the Foreword Most of us learn of Auschwitz and the Holocaust through the writings of...