Professor Bennetta Jules-Rosette

Fall 2025

This course will examine in detail the assumptions and techniques involved in the ethnographic recording of field data in written and audiovisual formats. It will juxtapose written, audiovisual, and mediated ethnographies and will critically assess their styles and approaches. You will be required to write an essay contrasting a written ethnography and a film and to develop an independent video project of your own. In so doing, we shall study the essential features of ethnographic and documentary field recording and editing.

WED 3:00-5:50 PM AND TH 2:00-4:20 PM, SSB 101.

Section ID: 974417 (SOCl) OR 974414 (SOCG). 6 UNITS.

Professor Bennetta Jules-Rosette

Summer Session II 2025: Aug 4-Sept 6. Session ID: 890625.

Tu/Th 6:00 – 8:50 pm

This course will focus on two major topics: (1) an examination of the social organization of religious movements, with a special emphasis on religious sects in contemporary America and Third World nations, and

(2) a more detailed analysis of religious practices, including liturgy, rituals, and the subjective experiences that accompany them. We shall begin by exploring the role of religious sects in the United States through library readings, field research reports, and accounts of current events. Then we shall focus on the comparative analysis of cross-cultural materials about religious movements and rituals in other societies.