Before I begin, I want to give a disclaimer: my graduate school application process was developed five years ago, and it was tailored to my needs, abilities, and finances. Additionally, among my peers, I find that my process was thorough, intense, and perhaps overkill. Finally, in spite of its length, this is a rough guide and is open to discussion, input, and questions in the comments. Your mileage may vary. Another feature of the #HiddenCurriculum conversation on Twitter is talking about things that you learned the hard way, things that might have been embarrassing because you didn’t know any better. In this case, this is both a guide and a story about how I applied to way too many graduate schools. Nonetheless, I hope this can help applicants develop a plan. Please take note of all bolded text. These are either things that may not be immediately apparent to you until you’re in the thick of applying (if at all).

First, we need a timeline. Applications are generally due in December (but not always). Deadlines and procrastination give me anxiety, so let’s begin in August. Read all of this first and plan accordingly, because many of these tasks will overlap in different ways.

Late July through September:

Get help. Odds are, the person who has the most experience with graduate school applications is going to be someone in your department. I was lucky to have a fantastic undergraduate advisor. I went over the plan with her, she helped me tweak it, she read everything I wrote, and she pushed back and called me out when I overstepped or said something stupid. Crucially, this person will likely be a letter writer, so talk to them about how many letters they’re willing to write. More on that later.

Cast a wide net as far as you can, geographically, and create a list. For me, this was “the United States, in states where midwifery is not illegal.” (I wanted to apply to Duke and Notre Dame, alas I could not.) Do a Google search (“anthropology + [geographic location] + [research topic]”), find articles, books, faculty profiles, and graduate program websites. Do the research to figure out who is doing work similar to what you’re interested in doing. Scour the websites of graduate programs and the schools to figure out what the funding looks like and what kind of resources are available with respect to mental health, community, activism, unionization, and other kinds of things that you might want while you’re in graduate school.

Let me go back and reiterate something, because this is important to know upfront: there are multiple websites you should be looking at within the same university. While not always true, the general structure is this: a graduate program exists within a department (e.g. Department of Anthropology), which exists within a graduate school or college (e.g. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), which exists within a university. At the very least, you should be looking at the Department and Graduate School websites. When you apply, you are effectively applying to each of them, so they oftentimes have their own requirements. The application itself will likely be on the Graduate School page, but anything you mail will likely be sent to the Department.

At the end of this process, I had picked fifteen schools (which I now understand is an absurd amount).

Justify your choices and cull the herd. That awesome advisor I had? Once I showed her this ridiculous and overeager list, she turned it around. “Okay, now write about all of them and justify to me why you need to go to each school.” This exercise forced me to reexamine the university resources, locations, funding, advisors, and research topics. It turns out that I had picked a few schools really just based on names, rankings, and ideas of prestige that otherwise didn’t really serve me any practical benefit as an ethnographer. Having to sit down to really think about that forced me to cut those prospects out.

Most of these selection criteria are going to depend on your needs, but the best advice I received – which I think is probably applicable to everyone – was to choose programs where you can potentially fit with at least three different advisors. Some programs may not ask you to pick an advisor until two, three, even four years in, and a lot can change in that time. Other times, people aren’t what they seem. Sometimes your advisor leaves. And, look, people die. It happens. Set yourself up for some flexibility. (I’m currently with my third advisor, so this was crucial advice in hindsight; not everyone is so lucky.)

How do you know who “fits?” Well, it’s a bit of guessing game, and it will develop over the next couple months (and years). At this point, I was picking based on research interests and publications. Ah, she’s a Medical Anthropologist who works in Sierra Leone. (Medical Anthropology, West Africa. Check and check!) This other prof works on men’s reproductive health and Islam in the Middle East. (Masculinities, reproductive health, Islam. Check, check, check. Middle East? Not so much, but that’s fine.) And so on. At the time, I thought it had to be a perfect fit, but I can tell you now, it does not. Today, I’m of the mind that it’s much more important to get along or even click with your advisor than it is to have common research interests, but at this stage, that can be really hard to figure out – another reason to pick a programs with multiple potential advisors. At the end of this process, I had whittled it down to nine schools (which is still, really, too much).

Now that I’ve been in graduate school for a while, I will also add a cynical note, and this is my personal opinion: prioritize potential advisors that have experience advising. Profs who have never advised before will be learning how to do so on you, and if they mess up, they face few if any repercussions, while your stakes are much, much higher. I’ve seen this play out too many times, but students can’t be expected to know this before they go in. If you find someone you really want to work with who hasn’t advised before, be open to having a co-chair (or co-advisor, basically a second advisor) with more experience.

Reach out to people you want to work with. Send them emails, add a CV if you have one, and introduce yourself. “Hi, my name is Dick Powis and I’m an undergraduate at Cleveland State University. I’m going to be applying to graduate programs in the coming months. I’m interested in doing (x, y, and z) in (wherever), which seems related to your work on (x, y, z,) in (wherever). Will you be taking graduate students to begin next fall?” This last part is important: not everyone can or will take students. One professor responded, “I’d like to, but I have two students who won’t be graduating on time this year, so I won’t have time or resources for another student.” This is very thoughtful, and I deeply appreciated the response. She continued, “I suggest that you reach out to my colleagues at [another university]. I think you’d fit right in there.” In other cases, the profs you contact may give you tips specifically tailored to applying to their program.

Something I did not do, but which I recommend doing, is ask the profs who respond affirmatively if they would put you in contact with one of their students. Talk to the students. Ask them, “How often do you see your advisor. Are they responsive to emails? Do they read your work and give you feedback? Do they actively help you learn proposal writing, research methods, data analysis, article publication, and forms of professionalization?” In essence, you’re looking for someone who can reveal or assist with other parts of the #HiddenCurriculum. At the same time, graduate school can be very emotionally exhausting for BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and neuro-atypical students, so finding someone who will show you empathy and have your back is also important. Branching out from there, ask the students about the department (e.g. funding, camaraderie, etc), the university (resources, health insurance, housing, parental leave), and even the city (“Can I escape when I need to?”).

Full disclosure, this process backfired on me once. When it seemed like I was asking too many questions, I was later told by one prof, “[This university’s] students don’t need their hands held.” I didn’t get in, and it’s probably for the best.

Created a spreadsheet, because things about to get really messy! Even if you’re applying to one or two schools, this should help you keep everything organized.

Go back to the graduate school application and graduate program websites (two different things!) and collect all the information you need about their application requirements. Here is an example list:

• Personal Statement
• Three letters of recommendation
• Writing sample
• University Transcripts
• GRE scores
• Application Fee (or Waiver)

Down the left side of the spreadsheet, make a list of the universities to which you intend to apply. Across the top, make a list of all the requirements. In the table, you need to develop a system for noting the requirements for each item. School X requires a statement of 2,000 words? Type “2000 words” in the cell that joins “School X” with “Personal Statement.” Someone requires two pages? Writing sample is optional? They only want two letters? That school doesn’t require GRE scores? Write it all down. That school wants a research statement? Make a new column, and then write it down too. The spreadsheet will help you keep track of all of this. Include URLs where you find this information so that you can quickly access it. Add the URL of the application page, too.

As you progress through the applications, come back to the spreadsheet and fill cells in with a different color to strikethrough text to tell yourself that the task is finished and uploaded (but do make sure that if it needs to be mailed, you note that as well).

Add a couple more columns: “Letter Writers” (which I’ll talk about next), “Primary contacts” (those are the profs), “Secondary Contacts” (those are the grad students), “Reached out,” and “Contact responded.” These last two are boxes to check when you’ve completed that respective task.

Finally, a note about application fees: Graduate school applications are expensive, but there are waivers for those of us who cannot afford them. My application fees would have totaled $666 (hell yeah), but I paid nothing. Search the university websites, do a Google search, or – as I had to in a couple cases – call the graduate school.

Think about who can write your letters. You need to pick at least three people who can write you strong letters of recommendation. Along with the Personal Statement, letters are the most important part of the application packet. Your writers should be professors with whom you’ve worked, with whom you’ve taken a course, or with whom you’ve had a conversation; and, I hate to say it, their job title matters. Professors, Associate Professors, and Assistant Professors should come before Visiting Professors, Adjunct Professors, and Lecturers. (It’s not the best system, but I will add that the latter three probably don’t have the time and definitely aren’t paid to be writing letters anyway. That’s my opinion, you may find otherwise.)

You can pick more than three, even though the programs will probably only require three letters. It’s not that you can send in more than three, but that you can give your writers a break by distributing the labor. I applied to nine schools; my advisor agreed to write nine letters. The other 18 letters can be divided twice (nine per writer), or three times (six per), and so on. This system will give you a chance to do a little social engineering as well. In my case, I was close to someone who had done their PhD at Berkeley, but had little time to write letters, so she agreed to write just one for my Berkeley application. That application was rejected, so it may not have helped, but I have heard professors say that they pay special attention to letters written by their colleagues or alumni of their programs. And, if you reverse engineer this, you may find yourself including the departments with which your mentors have connections in your pool of prospective graduate programs.

In general, it doesn’t hurt to ask very early, “Hey, when I apply to graduate school, would you mind writing me a couple letters? I can give you notice when the time comes, I just want to see if you’re comfortable with that.” (Remember, we’re still in August or September.) And then I give them four weeks, two weeks, one week, and then three, two, and one day notices. It’s important to talk with your writers about this process though too. In many cases, the letters of recommendation are not due until after your application is due, and it’s not always easy to figure out what that date is. When you apply, the system will ask you for the names and email addresses of your writers, and then it will send them an email asking for their letter. That email will have the due date, but you will not receive it. If you’re worried that a writer may not get it in on time (which happens), just ask them about the deadline for their letter, and then adjust your strategy accordingly. There’s a lot more detailed discussion out there about letter writers, how to pick them, how to politely nudge them, but I want to add: Show gratitude. Give them a Thank You card. If you really want to go overboard, send them a coffee mug from the school you got into.

Get to work on that personal statement. This is one of those things that requires its own blog post, and there are plenty of resources out there. I will add my own experiences here. The writing prompts are all different, but they’re essentially asking the same thing: where have you been, where are you now, and where are you going? Figure out which school has the highest maximum word or page count and do that one first. If a program has no maximum, aim for two pages, single-spaced. I wrote a generic template with spaces for the university names and a paragraph near the end that addressed each specific program. Then, cut down from there to meet the max word or page counts of each program.

A note about the GRE. When I applied five years ago, the GRE was the least important factor of the application. “It’s a formality,” one school told me. That’s an expensive formality, I thought. Today, some departments aren’t even requiring it. For those that do, don’t stress out. Do not withhold an application just because you have low GRE scores, unless, of course, you have to be picky because applications are expensive. (See? It’s a mess.) For the programs that do look at GRE scores, writing and verbal scores are generally more important than the math scores. And importantly, as with applications, there are waivers for the GRE fee. You’ll need to figure out how to get one on the GRE website and you’ll need to work with your home institution to secure it, because they have to send in your financial information to prove that you’re in need of one.

October – November:

Applications for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship are due in the last week of October (in 2018). The #HiddenCurriculum of NSF-GRFP applications is its own monster, and it tends to change from year to year faster than grad school applications, so I don’t feel comfortable talking about it. There are a lot of resources online to help you find your way (but do be careful that the advice given matches with the current year’s NSF application requirements!). If you are planning to apply, make “NSF-GRFP” its own institution on the left column of your spreadsheet and integrate it into your plan. Also, you’ll need letter writers.

If possible, meet people. Are you planning on going to the meeting of the American Anthropological Association in November? Email those profs again and ask if they’ll be in attendance and willing to sit down for 15-20 minutes for some coffee and a chat. Ask if their students will be there and reach out to them for the same. Go to their presentations. Invite them to yours, if you have one. (The #HiddenCurriculum of the AAA meetings is its own thing, too. Hopefully someone else can write that one. In the meantime, here’s a student guide for 2018.) And if not, ask if they’d be willing to have a conversation over Skype.

Get an elevator pitch together. It doesn’t need to be about research plans and it doesn’t need to gush about a university, professor, or theoretical perspective (I’ve heard those). Just a 30-second pitch about who you are and what you’re interested in. I also liked to hit profs with, “So, what book are you reading right now?”

December:

You’ve done the footwork. You’ve made contact. You have a good idea of where you’re applying and who’s writing letters. Now to tighten everything up. Go back through, make sure everything looks good. Make sure that your personal statements match the university you’re sending it to. Make sure you’ve finished and uploaded everything.

Have anxiety about letter writers.

Hit “Send” and cry about the uncertainty of your future.

Post-December:

A note about GradCafe. It is not good for your mental health. It is anxiety inducing and horrifying and can become addictive. Avoid it like the plague. If you don’t know what GradCafe is, just keep it that way.

Alright, so I probably got some things wrong here or left a lot out (e.g. funding!), and seeing as I’m writing about academia, I’m sure someone will let me know straight-away in the comments or in my Twitter mentions. But that’s the #HiddenCurriculum, right? I feel like I’ve only got half the story. One interesting thing I’ve realized just writing this is how the hidden curricula become nested within each other. So, let me be clear again: what worked for me may not work for you. Talk to your advisors about planning. Talk to people at the university to which you’re applying. Talk to graduate students. If anything, I hope this can serve as a framework.

Epilogue: Of nine applications, I was accepted to my top two choices. That makes sense because they were the best fits. But don’t apply to nine schools.

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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This series – #ROR2018 – has taken a backseat for several months. I’ve been mostly active on Twitter while I navigate state bureaucracies, assemble a research team, begin the process of data collection, management, and analysis, build a house, do my part to getting Footnotes off the ground, deal with #hautalk, fast for Ramadan, and focus on my visiting partner. Things have been hectic, but I found a fleeting moment to address something. Recently, I received an email from a student. Here is an excerpt:

I would be very curious and interested to read something about how you engage in what you named “visual ethnography” and how photography interacts in your practice in anthropological research: what use do you make of the camera? What place holds photography in your project? How does it change it?

I want to begin by noting that “visual ethnography” is not my term nor is it my invention. I want to first clarify how I think about ethnography. The suffix of ethnography should not denote that it is just about writing, but that it involves description, representation, and record more generally. It can be written and it can be recorded as a photograph and video, but it can even be a soundscape or illustration. The term “visual ethnography” may then seem redundant, but I think it’s necessary in order to distinguish a particular sensory engagement from the accepted standard of reading “written ethnography.” Importantly, I don’t think that any form of ethnography should stand alone: just as visual ethnography should be paired with text (or something else), so too do I believe that text should be paired with non-text. My hope is that we can move toward a significantly more mainstream “multimodal” model of anthropology, to use a hot new word. Multimodality describes just that: anthropology that engages with the world by many different ways. Text and photos and video, but also social media, art, experience, sense, and on and on and on.

Ethnographic photography, in particular, is practically as old as the camera,[1] but some of my favorite work comes out of the early to mid-20th century. While not deliberately ethnographic, you should spend some time perusing the documentary oeuvre of Kiowa photographer Horace Poolaw and portraiture of the Malian photographers, Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe. Among today’s active photographers, I admire the portraiture of Matika Wilbur and Omar Victor Diop, the street photography of Brent Luvaas, and the work of Jason De Léon. Not all of these photographers were or are “ethnographers,” but to say their work is not ethnographic or documentary[2] would be to undermine the expansive potential of ethnography itself.

To answer the above questions, it is tempting to say that the camera is another tool and photography another kind of data, but that would be a vulgar underestimation of what they actually can do. The camera is a tool, but also method, key, and weapon; photography is data, but also directive, generative, and educational.

The camera both opens doors and closes them. In my experience, people want to be photographed during the events for which they are dressed to the nines, like naming ceremonies and marriages, which I attend frequently, but also religious holidays like Korité (Eid al-Fitr) and Tabaski (Eid al-Adha). Being known as a photographer means being invited to these events which are so important to peoples’ lives and it means sharing in celebration with them. The camera has been at the center of conversations which jumpstart of new friendships.

Most of the people I photograph begin as strangers and become my friends. I help with the farm work, go through all the annoying ethics documents with them, and ask for their input into the creative process. (Kate Schneider, personal communication)

People do not always want to be photographed as they walk through the market, drive to work, or take part in other quotidian tasks – the kinds of things one captures in the genre of “street photography.” As a result, while I’m regularly told to take my camera everywhere, I’ve actually been taking my camera to fewer and fewer places. People treat me differently, sometimes as an interloper (one who invades private and personal spaces), other times as a tourist (one who is not significantly invested in the care and attention to the experiences of the community around me). Common sense is helpful: I would never raise the camera to my eye in the thick of a hospital waiting room, consultation room, or delivery room, even if childbirth lies at the center of my dissertation research. Those are moments best left to the memory of the attendees.

One reason I chose anthropology, as opposed to journalism, was because anthropology allows me to put my camera down. I don’t always need to “get the shot.” (Jeffrey Schonberg, personal communication)

The key, of course, is to be respectful and to ask permission, and to engage in a collaborative project and to pay or barter when appropriate. A collaborator’s time, labor, and voice are important to the development of strong ethnographic photography. When in doubt, one might ask themselves what they might do as not to embody the naked entitlement and privilege from which Diane Arbus and Susan Sontag have drawn.

“Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do,” [Diane] Arbus wrote. The camera is a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed. The whole point of photographing people is that you are not intervening in their lives, only visiting them. The photographer is supertourist, an extension of the anthropologist, visiting natives and bringing back news of their exotic doings and strange gear. The photographer is always trying to colonize new experiences or find new ways to look at familiar subjects—to fight against boredom” (Sontag 1977, 33).

Move slowly and with caution. Compose carefully. If possible, use film. Take the time to listen to those with whom you engage, or at least make yourself conspicuous to them, as well as your audience.

Take your time, shoot film. Publish photos, lest we keep our interlocutors invisible. Be visible in your work. (Jason De Léon, paraphrased from my #displace18 notes)

I like to joke, perhaps to the chagrin of my committee, that if “a picture is worth a thousand words,” then I should be able to submit a portfolio of 100 photographs as my dissertation. What it really means is that photos can be coded (if coding is your thing). Codes are thematic keywords, which are akin to hashtags, that one can assign to words, phrases, paragraphs, but also photos (or parts of photos), video, sound – anything really. The codes I use have been collaboratively developed and defined (in Wolof, French, and English) with the assistance of two Senegalese graduate students. I use these same codes to organize my photography in order to tie visual representations of themes, ideas, or just memories to those that are written (i.e. notes) and spoken (i.e. transcriptions). Like notes, not everything can be coded and photography is therefore also generative; it gives way to new ideas, directions, and questions, particularly when they don’t fit neatly into categories. Photography gives me pause for reflection. It provides visual cues from which I recall details that I might not have put into words at the time, or maybe I can catch things that I had not seen before.

So, then, back to methods: Photographs can also be cues to others. With a method called “photo elicitation,” we may present a photograph to someone and ask, “Can you tell me about this?” With another called “photo voice,” we call on a group of participants to take photographs and then present them to each other in a focus group-style interview session. In both cases, though to varying degrees, what we’re seeking is the perspective of the participant in a different way than we might in informal conversation or formalized interviews.

My journey with photography – like the rest of my work and my approach to it – is still unfolding, but I know that it will occupy a significant portion of my dissertation. (Editor’s Note: Dear Committee, Not 100%. Sincerely, Dick.) There’s only so much of the story that I can tell in writing.

[1] Early examples of photography that told us something about people and their relationships to histories, experiences, and power can be found in the works of Augustus Washington, a Black American portrait photographer and daguerreotypist who worked in Senegal, Gambia, and Sierra Leone and opened a studio in Liberia in 1853; the Lutterodt brothers, Ghanaian portrait photographers of the late 19th century; Alphonso Lisk-Carew, the Sierra Leonean portrait photographer of the early 20th century. Even though they came after some of those listed above, the following three White Dudes tend to be a starting point for the history of ethnographic photography in Visual Anthropology curricula and “household names” (at least in the house of North Atlantic Anthropology): Franz Boas was using photography as early as 1894, the photographer Edward Curtis began his career in “salvage ethnography” in 1895, and Bronislaw Malinowski was photographing during his research between 1915-1918.

[2] In my Visual Anthropology course in college, we were asked, throughout the semester, to ponder the difference between visual ethnography and documentary. The best answer I could come up with was that it depended on whose voice was most apparent – researcher, collaborator, participant. As filmmakers and photographers collaborate with ethnographers, or as students seek dual training in ethnography and film/photo, I’m not so sure it’s a question worth asking any more.

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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ToDoist (iOS/Android/Windows): ToDoist is my lifeblood. It helps me keep track of everything I have to do today, tomorrow, eventually. You can organize your tasks into projects, add notes, and bring on collaborators. ToDoist syncs across all devices, and there is even a browser version. The best part, I think, is that ToDoist syncs with Google Calendar, and in both directions: if I add things to Calendar with a certain tag, it adds to ToDoist and vice versa. That way, I can add a meeting to Calendar, and then ToDoist will remind me. Optionally, ToDoist can send you an email every morning with your day’s tasks. ToDoist is basically what keeps my life together.

Social media apps (iOS/Android/Windows): Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are my go-to social media apps. They help me talk to my colleagues back home who might have experience with this kind of research or in Senegal. They facilitate my live-fieldnotes ecosystem so that I can share what I’m learning in real-time.

WhatsApp (iOS/Android/Windows): Like the social media apps, WhatsApp keeps me in contact with colleagues back home, but since WhatsApp is very popular here in Dakar, it also keeps me in contact with my research assistants and peers.

GoogleMaps (iOS/Android/Windows): Until recently, the satellite photos of Dakar were a splotchy, pixelated mess, but in the last year they’ve cleared up and become a little more detailed. Some neighborhoods even have street view. So, when I’m learning a new bus route or taking a cab ride, I can follow the little blue dot (me) on my phone and tie specific landmarks that I see out the window to where I am in the city. It helps to add stars on major landmarks – homes or restaurants I’ve visited – so that I have a clearer orientation of where I am. This is a big help in a densely populated city like Dakar, where a lot of things look the same to the uninitiated.

Box (iOS/Android): Box is my cloud-service of choice. It’s encrypted, secure, and the only cloud-service approved for use in research by my institutional review board. I have a free membership through my university, but it would be well worth the price, too.

Microsoft OneNote (iOS/Android/Windows) or Notability (iOS): For the iPad, I currently use OneNote for my interviews, though I used to use Notability until it suddenly stopped working right when I needed it. (I should say that Notability has probably had the bugs worked out, so you should give it a shot, but I haven’t looked back since moving to OneNote.) Both apps sync with many cloud-based data storage systems, including Box. After converting my interview instruments to PDF, I load them into OneNote, and that allows me to take notes right on the PDF during the interview. Because OneNote automatically syncs with the cloud, I can access these files instantly on my laptop or iPhone. I’ve even inserted a photo from my phone into a file and then watched it appear on my iPad.

Notes (iOS): Notes is an app that comes with iOS. I use it to jot down thoughts, quotes, events, and notes throughout the day.

MagicPlan (iOS/Android): Part of my research is about the gendering of space. What kinds of spaces are allowable to which genders, and under what circumstances are genders segregated? To help me map gendered space in large extended family households, I use MagicPlan. MagicPlan is an interior design app used for mapping a home. It uses augmented reality by placing the user in the middle of a room, lining up arrows with corners, and then more-or-less taking a picture. Turn, next corner, snap. Turn, doorway, snap. Finish a room, attach it to the last room, and before you know it, you’ve got a house. Then I export to PDF, take it into Adobe Illustrator CC, and add some color coding. I’ve been using it for five years, and it’s only gotten faster and easier to use. The app is free to use, but exporting PDFs of the plans comes at a premium.

ScannerPro (iOS): If you’re doing research with funding from a major organization (e.g. Wenner-Gren, National Science Foundation, Fulbright-Hays), receipts are everything. If you’re dealing with a foreign bureaucracy like an ethical review board or ministry, you need to make copies of everything. If you have hand-written notes, interview instruments, or hand-drawn maps, you’ll want copies of those too. I use ScannerPro, an app that takes photos of documents, converts them to plain black-and-white, and uploads them to Box.

What do you use? Do you have any recommendations?

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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And, predictably, no amount of unproblematic entry will prevent the difficult transition that I always have: First, some mixture of jet lag, allergies, humidity, and weather lays me out for a day or two; this time four and counting. It’s embarrassing to arrive and then appear to go straight to bed for longer than a day while my body resets. The longer lasting difficulty is having to readjust to the languages. I find that when people speak to me in French, they prefer a French response – the same for Wolof – but without thinking I might just respond with whichever comes naturally. This can be a real problem when remembering to use tu– and vous-forms appropriately (I am habituated to using tu) or responding to older people with Wolof slang (which always gets a laugh from younger people). While I am considered conversationally fluent in French, it’s important to note that I didn’t begin learning French until I was 26, (and Wolof at 28). I was once told that the ability to learn a new language after the age of 16 falls precipitously, though I’m not sure if that’s true. It takes my brain about 3-4 weeks to relearn major social and linguistic cues and after two months I have relatively no problems.

I’m currently staying with relatives of my host in the Liberté 6 neighborhood for a few weeks while my house in Parcelles becomes habitable. As it stands, it has no roof, windows, doors, running water, or electricity, but it should very soon. I bought a brand new front door and watched it get installed the day I arrived. I am apprehensive to completely unpack until I can do so in my own semi-permanent space. I say semi-permanent because I am co-funding the construction of this house with my host and I understand that I should always have a place there when I want to return. Rather than pay rent, I’ve chosen to put the same amount of money that I could afford for rent into this home. That money goes a lot further, of course, than it would in the US.

I would like to start my research timeline by the end of January by at least renewing contact with the clinic(s) in which I want to work and putting out a call for research assistants. I’ve been told that starting research within the first month is ambitious at best, even foolhardy. It keeps me motivated, especially as I seize upon my New Year’s resolutions – something I’ve never pursued before – to exercise, take photographs every day, and keep a rigid routine involving not only my health but research-related items such as committing at least one hour per day to writing highly detailed ethnographic notes. (In the future, I will write a blog in this series about my workflow and the mobile apps that I find indispensable to ethnographic research.)

The transition into research seems to be as much of a “hurry up and wait” situation as it was when I was waiting on my funding to come through. It might be that the hardest part is just learning to cut myself some slack.

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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Early on in college, I took a lot of inspiration from John Hawks’ article calling for researchers to be transparent and engaging with their research in combination with Tricia Wang’s article outlining “open ethnography.” To me, Wang’s methodology was an answer to Hawks’ call. Somehow, I would have to navigate ethics review boards which weren’t at all familiar with using social media to disseminate information – and I did (which is a blog post for another time). Later, Samuel Collins and Matt Durington’s work helped me to refine my multimodal workflow, and with Harjant Gill’s help I was able to articulate my mission. As I’ve written there, here, and elsewhere, the overarching goal of publishing data in near-real-time across multiple platforms is to engage multiple audiences, i.e. my home public, a social media savvy Senegalese public, and academic scholars worldwide. Each entry written on a particular social network for a particular audience paints a larger picture when taken as a whole. Conversations with Kate Schneider, Matika Wilbur, and Jeffery Schonberg gave spirit to the ethical relationship between my photography and my photographic collaborators, extending as a fine analog to the relationship between the research and the research participants. I’ve played with some of these multimodal methods in the last five years and I’m about to begin the 12 months of my dissertation fieldwork, so I think it’s important for me to outline the vision of my open ethnography.

This is the ecosystem of my live fieldnotes.

• Facebook: Short texts, personal musings, and conversations about life and research, but also things that have nothing at all to do with research or Senegal. (Access to this account is limited.)
• Twitter (@dtpowis): Shortest texts and multilingual musings reaching the widest audience. While my home public looks on, this is the social media where I’m mostly like to engage with Senegalese interlocutors.
• Instagram (@dtpowis3): Snapshots of selfies, food, books, notes, Post-It Notes, mind maps, sketches, and other kinds of ethnographic marginalia.
• Instagram (@dickpowis): Street and portrait photography captured with digital or film cameras. (Yes, I am lugging darkroom equipment and chemistry to Dakar.)
• Anthrodendum: Long texts about my experiences preparing for and engaging in life and dissertation research (if there is a difference). I’ll use this space to fuse together the smaller components from other social media accounts and fieldnotes and talk about emergent themes. The subreddit r/Anthropology can sometimes serve as an extended comments section to discuss the content of my blog posts, because I’m doing that now since that I’ve had a change of heart.

I’m avoiding YouTube because I know too much about video editing and the time and effort required for that kind of project would completely consume the research project that I am there to do. (Data is very expensive, as well.) I won’t employ Snapchat in this ecosystem because I would like my notes to have some permanence. All materials will be united across all platforms with the hashtag #RoR2018 (i.e. Relations of Reproduction 2018). Am I missing anything? Is there anything else I should consider?

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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In July and August 2017, I had the great privilege of participating in the NSF-sponsored Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) ethnographic methods field school. For six weeks, we worked closely with local leaders and activists to design and carry out a research project that met certain needs in the community, while working together in a course on research design, field methods (with a special emphasis on community-based participatory research), analysis, and data management. Writing interview questions has been largely self-taught with some guidance from mentors, but this past summer I learned a more concrete method for instrument writing, one that holds me accountable for avoiding confirmation bias, leading questions, and respondent fatigue.

Justify Yourself
In my last blog post, I wrote that proposal writing should link expected data to the methods and analysis, the methods and analysis back to the research questions, and those questions back to the research objectives. Here, I link the interview questions in the same way by forcing myself – in writing – to justify asking the question. In the HEAT field school, we called this the “Intents” list.

Open a spreadsheet. Label your columns from left to right: Interview Question, Purpose, Research Objective, and Notes. Each row is dedicated to reflecting on each interview question.

You can come up with questions in one of two ways: I look to my research objectives to think of specific inquiries that might help me achieve those objectives. I might also think of a question – inspired by related publications, my own fieldnotes, or focus group interviews – and try to reverse engineer its linkage to a research objective.

For example, my first research objective is “To determine the extent to which there is a gendered division of knowledge about prenatal care.”

I would like to ask, “How do people take care of pregnant women?” This will go in the Question column.

What is the purpose of asking this question? It asks respondents to identify particular practices associated with a cultural domain (prenatal care). It hinges on a respondent’s understanding of “care” and what it means to provide that care to another person; it narrows the provision of care to pregnant women; it leaves the provider of care (“people”) open to interpretation so that I can ask later, “Do men do this? Do women do this?” It provides an opportunity to flesh out the things that people might do which they might not classify as care, but are nonetheless unique in some way.

I know that “Objective 1” belongs in the third column, though I might also link it to a more specific Research Question from my proposal.

Under Notes, I might remind myself that this question comes from a previous study, or that it leads me to another related question, or I can note the kinds of probes I should use. Demographic and introductory questions like, “Tell me about yourself, where you grew up, and how long you’ve lived here,” do not necessarily need to be linked to an Objective or have Notes, but it’s still a good practice to justify the purpose of asking.

My Secret Weapon: The Pregnancy Journal
I also have a sort of unique way of developing interview questions for my project: I bought a pregnancy journal. The journal invites expectant mothers to write about their experiences while also guiding them through what is “normal” or what they can expect during pregnancy. The journal is (of course) aimed at women, rather than men. I begin with the first question from the journal – “How did you find out you were pregnant?” – and I envision myself talking to a Senegalese man. “How did she find out she was pregnant?” but also, “How, and when, did you find out she was pregnant?” I add “when” because I know that men are often the last to find out. The next question, “How did you feel when you found out?” translates for men – I can ask the same thing. Next, “How did you tell your partner?” in a Senegalese man’s context might be rendered, “Who told you?” (because it isn’t always the expectant mother) and “How did they tell you?” And so on. The journal is also aimed at Americans, not Senegalese, and it therefore forces me to reflect on determining the questions that are more meaningful for Senegalese research participants. The book has a section on “Gear” and asks expectant mothers what gifts they want to receive at their baby shower. Related questions would prove to be inappropriate in Dakar where baby showers are non-existent (and potentially dangerous affairs that would draw the attention of evil spirits to a pregnancy). On the other hand, seven days after the birth of a child, they are baptized and given a name, and the family does receive gifts. So, while the journal provides a handy way to plan a baby shower – “Who is invited? What will we eat? What is expected?” – I can easily translate the guide into the context of a Senegalese baptism.

Respondent Fatigue and Following Up
The pregnancy journal has generated dozens and dozens of important questions – on top of those I already had – which I am currently working to justify and link to research objectives. (Actually, I’m writing this blog post as a means of procrastinating from writing my interview instruments.) It’s a good thing that I’ll be doing follow-up interviews with a core group of expectant parents every two weeks, otherwise a single interview with all of these questions would take many hours. You’ve got to give yourself and your participants a break – at a certain point, you’ll get annoyed, they’ll get annoyed, answers become shorter, probing stops working, and it’s a mess. I find 90-minute interviews are the sweet spot, but that might depend on the topic of conversation.

What this means is that I’m actually writing multiple instruments – not just for different samples of different stakeholders, but also for multiple interview session with the same participants. It works out, because I can organize these interviews around themes that arise during pregnancy. For instance, I might write an entire interview about prenatal screening and clinical care, or diet and morning sickness, or how and why one hides pregnancy, or how the baptism is planned. And if these interviews don’t pan out (as they often don’t in Dakar), writing the instruments should guide my attention to these themes as a participant-observer.

Construction
Once I have a list of viable and sufficiently justified questions, I work on reordering them so that they flow from general to specific and so that the question topics follow from one to the next thematically. We want respondents to be primed and already thinking about the next question before we ask it. In fact, I think of this way: At the very least, I should always be able to write “This question primes respondents for the next question” in the Purpose column. Finally, before I ever sit down for an interview, I go through the instrument with close friends in Dakar. These dry-runs are critical, as my peers can help me fine-tune the wording; sometimes questions don’t translate conceptually, sometimes there is room to ask delicate questions more carefully, and sometimes my French just comes off like a Parisian textbook.

Thanks for reading. I’m trying to have these out every Monday morning (so far so good) and next week I think I might write about ethical review. Someone did ask me to write about what I’m taking to Dakar, but I think I’ll save that post for after I get there. If you missed my first post, go back and read it to catch up on what my research is about and why I’m writing this series. Also, just to follow-up on that post: I HAVE BEEN APPROVED by both the ethical review board at the Senegalese Ministry of Health and by Fulbright-Hays. My ticket is purchased, and I’ll be in Dakar the first week of January.

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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As I mentioned in my previous blog, my dissertation research is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSFGRFP) and the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship (FHDDRA). The former provides three years of funding that must be used in five years of graduate school. I can use it in place of a TA stipend while I’m on campus or I can use it during fieldwork. In my case, I’ve opted to defer it while I’m in the field so that I can use the Fulbright-Hays, and then I’ll use it when I get back so that I don’t have to TA while I write-up. The proposal that I wrote for the NSFGRFP was submitted during my senior year in college, and I’m sorry to say that I can’t recall a particular process that I used to write it. For those looking for information on how to write a proposal for the NSFGRFP, there are some useful websites, guides, and resources on the internet, and you can read my dreadful proposal here. The FHDDRA is another – much longer – story.

Start Early and Construct a Prototype
The sociocultural curriculum at Washington University is designed with very specific goals in mind, perhaps none more important than “get your research funded.” So, while I would like to say that the Proposal Writing course that we are privileged to have at WashU was the most influential to my ability to win money, the process started before that. First, I consider the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (NSFDDRIG) as a prototype, as it may be the longest and most comprehensive form of a dissertation research grant for sociocultural anthropologists. My proposal for the NSFDDRIG was ten pages, single-spaced, Times New Roman, 11pt font, justified, with one-inch margins on all sides. (Additionally, there was a four-page section of References Cited in the same format. I used the Chicago Manual of Style author-date citation.) That gives me an enormous amount of room to explain my project, and that’s important because proposal writing (for me) amounts to the spectre of my mentors watching as I write while incessantly asking, “Why is that important?” and “How do you know that?” The headers of the NSFDDRIG are up to the author, so I took some winning proposals which were generously donated by more senior graduate students and constructed my own in this order:

Problem Statement: What is the problem? Why is it important? Foreshadow every major point you’re going to make in the rest of the proposal. This section is constantly being retooled as new things are being added later in the proposal because you don’t want readers to find something out half-way through. At the same time, you’ve got to keep it brief.

Research Objectives (1, 2, and 3): Once I’ve explained the problem, I’ve got to explain what my objectives are to figuring out an answer to the problem. Here, you should foreshadow what kinds of data counts as satisfying these objectives and what kinds of methods are most appropriate for collecting that data.

Literature Review (with subsections): Backup a second. Your work is a response to other scholars’ work – you’re having a conversation – so you need to catch the reader up on what has been said so far and how your project proposes something new and different.

Research Methods (includes Timeline, Sampling Design, Data Collection, and Data Analysis)

Research Timeline: A broad overview of your plan. I put mine into a table that took up half-a-page and basically said, in “Months 1-2” (first column), I’ll be “Hiring research assistants; conducting focus group interviews with community stakeholders and gatekeepers; recruiting interview participants” and so forth.

Sampling Design: Who do you need to talk to and why? What methods will you use with them and what kind of data do you expect to get from them? How will those data answer objectives 1 or 2 or 3? (Tie it back to the rest of the proposal.)

Data Collection Methods: What are the methods you will use, what data do you expect to get from them, why are those data important to helping you make your argument, and how do those data relate to your objectives?

Data Analysis: Once you collect your data, what will you do to confirm that they address your objectives and how will you recognize that they do?

Broader Impacts: “encompasses the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes” (from NSF 15-556). For me, this meant giving back to the community and participants with which I work, giving back to the academic community in Dakar, and (lastly) engaging my home public though social media.

Research Experience: Who are you and why are you the right person for the job?

This is an important first consideration because it serves as a kind of checklist. One of the first things that I needed to do as a graduate student at WashU was prepare my “Second Year Paper,” a sort of part lit review, part non-thesis made up of three parts: two theoretical (I chose Postcolonial Theory and Masculinity) and one Area Studies (i.e. Senegal for me). This paper needed to be submitted to my committee by early-January of my second year. Just before that, in the fall semester of the second year, we’re taking a Research Methods in Anthropology course. Therefore, by the time we begin our Proposal Writing course in the spring of our second year, we’ve already got our literature review and our methods roughly done – which were a full seven pages of my ten-page proposal. The biggest challenge for me in the Proposal Writing course was not designing the research (much of that had already been cooking for a couple years), but stringing it all together in a cogent, deliberate, and airtight argument. While we spent weeks writing and re-writing and re-writing the Problem Statement and Objectives in a class dedicated to fine-tuning the argument, I was also taking a course in Argumentation through Ethnography which was teaching me – by deep-reading newly published ethnographic monographs – how to piece together arguments and turn data into evidence. That semester completely changed the way I thought about writing and the most significant lessons I learned were simple: Say what you’re going to do and don’t leave loose ends.

Cut, cut, cut.
The reason, I think, that it’s important to begin with the NSFDDRIG is that it is easier (for me) to trim and cut material than it is to add. It is true that some agencies are asking different kinds of questions. The Social Science Research Council, for example, wants Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship proposals to draw heavily on interdisciplinarity, so I wrote about feminist geography, urban studies, global health, and the sociology of space. The Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant Application asks the dreaded Question 5: “What contribution does your project make to anthropological theory and to the discipline?” – an overwhelming question that one must answer in half of the space allotted to the other four questions! NSF and SSRC do care about your answer to this question, but they aren’t asking so explicitly, and having seen previous NSF and SSRC dissertation award proposals, I’m fairly certain that someone could skate by with barely a consideration to their contributions to anthropological theory and still be awarded money. Indeed, they have.

Aside from these differences in questions, the major components remain the same: What is the problem? What is the context of the problem? How are you going to figure it out? The most significant difference between the NSFDDRIG and the rest of my proposals is the page count. While the NSFDDRIG is up to ten pages, single-spaced, the Wenner-Gren is essentially four and a half pages, single-spaced; SSRC was ten pages, double-spaced; Fulbright U.S. includes a two-page, single-space “Grant Purpose” and a one-page, single-spaced personal statement; my Fulbright-Hays was eight pages, double-spaced. I think that completing the NSFDDRIG first, if possible, will allow you to get the fullest view of your research plan.

Find a community!
Lastly, I recommend joining a writing group, either on campus or online, where members are committed to regularly reading and commenting on each other’s writing. It, of course, helps if those members are either at the same level of proposal writing or are experienced and winning proposal winners in anthropology. Importantly: A winning proposal does not make it a model for future writers. First, sometimes people win because the problem statement is just that irresistible and compelling, despite their dreadful methodologies and incomplete literature reviews. (I know! I’ve seen them!) Second, as long as judges, entry rules, annual budgets, and trends in anthropology are changing from year to year, the target will always be moving. Do not take winning examples and attempt to replicate their formulas. It won’t work.

So, in the end, between April 2016 and June 2017, I wrote and submitted two FHDDRA proposals, I wrote three NSF-DDRIG proposals and submitted two, I wrote two Wenner-Gren proposals and submitted one, and I wrote and submitted one proposal to SSRC and one for the Fulbright U.S. That’s nine written proposals, seven submitted, and one awarded. But let’s be honest – they’re all basically the same.

To recap:
Develop a prototype. I recommend the NSFDDRIG.
Be recursive. Tie everything you write into something else you’ve already written. Justify every word and sentence.
Find a community of writers to work with.
Write a lot and submit a lot, but also don’t write too much because you already have a prototype. (That doesn’t make sense. I know.)

Next up: Ethical review or writing the interview instruments?

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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I am about to depart for Dakar, Senegal to begin twelve months of dissertation research. I’m not sure when I’ll be leaving – the slog of uncoordinated bureaucratic machines keeps me from knowing just yet. For now, I’m just in that all-too-familiar mode of “hurry up and wait”: I was packed and ready to leave November 1. I am packed and ready to leave December 1. And given a recent hiccup in the process, it looks like I’ll be packed and ready to leave January 1, too. While in Dakar, I intend to blog about my experience (in addition to use my social media accounts) as I have in the past. In my current liminal time – pending approval from Fulbright-Hays, pending approval from an ethical review board – in which I fear committing to meetings, conferences, and dinners too far out because I just don’t know when I will leave, I suppose I can start blogging about it now.

Consider this the first in an ongoing series about my dissertation research. I will begin by giving some background as well as a primer on my research objectives, that way we have some context with which to ground the later blog posts.

Relations of Reproduction: Investigating Men, Masculinity, and Pregnancy in Dakar, Senegal

Since 2012, I’ve been researching medical plurality and competing bodies of healthcare knowledge in Dakar, Senegal which has led me to my dissertation research on men and pregnancy. My dissertation research is about expectant fathers, gendered spaces, and changing ideas and practices of masculinity more broadly in Dakar. In Senegal, as in much of West Africa, men are proscribed from spaces associated with women’s activities (or affaire u jigeen in Wolof, literally “women’s business”), meaning that even if men are open to engaging in that space, they risk flouting social decorum or may not be welcome. While some nongovernmental organizations (such as Tostan Senegal) aim to get men more involved with their pregnant partners with the idea that it will improve maternal and infant health outcomes, kin and local healthcare professionals through their use of space may actually be indirectly discouraging them from doing so. My dissertation research is an ethnographic exploration of (1) the shifting meanings, desires, and experiences of expectant fathers in Dakar, Senegal, (2) the ways in which men navigate gendered spaces while simultaneously balancing the tensions between their desires to be engaged in the continuum of reproduction with the social risk of transgressing notions local notions of masculinity and femininity, and (3) how men renegotiate their own masculinities as they transition into fatherhood in the context of locally-produced gender norms, changing forms of marriage, religious notions of parenting, and economic precarity.

Because pregnancy is not a regular topic of conversation among men or between men and women in Senegal, my research methods require careful and thoughtful community engagement. This means that in addition to undertaking participant observation in the homes of my interlocutors, I must work in closely coordinated partnership with healthcare professionals and college student researchers to recruit participants in clinics. Additionally, my commitment to public engagement means that my ongoing research is shared and accessible to both Senegalese and American laypeople through social media and blogging. Finally, as a visual ethnographer, I rely heavily upon digital and film photography to document the daily lives of my research participants. My research is supported in part by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship.

While I’m in Dakar, I’ll focus these blog posts on my experience, data, thoughts and themes, methodological challenges, and photography. Until I leave though (which is looking more and more like January 1 at this point), I’d like to write about my pre-departure preparations. First of all, I’m willing to take some requests. Should I write about my proposal writing process, or how I go about writing an interview instrument, or what I’m taking with me to Dakar? What else? Hopefully, such posts can get readers talking about similar issues in their own research, and ultimately I’d like this series to be a resource to undergraduates and other graduate students as a transparent case study in how one goes about doing dissertation research. What would be most helpful?

Second, for searchability, I’ll need a hashtag to attach to every post in this series, like #RoR2018 or something. Any suggestions? Let me know in the comments!

Dick

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.

www.dickpowis.com

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