NEC Speaker to Discuss Creative Applications for Research Techniques
Dr. Carol Hendrickson, Professor of Anthropology at Marlboro College in Vermont, will give a presentation on her methods for collecting and keeping field notes on Thursday, April 14 at 7:15 p.m. at the Danforth Library at New England College. The Library is located at 196 Bridge Street in Henniker. The program, sponsored by the Friends of the H. Raymond Danforth Library, is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.
For the past 25 years, Carol Hendrickson has been studying the work of the weavers of the central highlands of Guatemala, and is an expert on the woven Maya dress known as the traje. Through her work, Dr. Hendrickson has been able to gain valuable insight on the ways in which clothing relates cultural meanings and provides information on ethnicity and identity, as well as gender, class, and politics. To document her research, she has relied on commonly used techniques such as interviews, observations, and photography, but has become an advocate for what she describes as “visual field notes.”
In her presentation, Paper Trails – Visual Journaling, Dr. Hendrickson will offer examples of the type of visual field notes she has collected through her world travels as an educator and researcher. Combining detailed writing and drawing, she also incorporates items such as newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, candy wrappers, and other memorabilia, which provide a more complete picture of the place or event that she is studying. Dr. Hendrickson also encourages her students to keep visual and written field notes as a way of developing a closer connection to the world around them and to seeing with fresh eyes what they might not have noticed.
Dr. Hendrickson believes that the research tools of cultural anthropologists can be applied to the personal journals, travel experiences, and memorable life moments captured and recorded by the public over their lifetimes. Her presentation will detail creative techniques that can be used by all.
Dr. Hendrickson is the author of Weaving Identities: Construction of Dress and Self in a Highland Guatemala Town and co-author of Tecpan Guatemala: A Modern Maya Town in Global and Local Context. She was awarded a Fulbright-Hays faculty research grant for her work in Guatemala and has participated in research trips to Vietnam, South India, and China. She received her B.S. from Bates College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
