In the process, you will learn a lot about the nature of community, and you will learn a lot about human nature. No doubt you will learn a lot about yourself and your capabilities as well.
 

I will also be maintaining all of my material on my web page: http://www.umsl.edu/~wolfordj/courses/hc353.

The major requirements for this class lie in the fieldwork exercises. Your projects will be performed in conjunction with work being conducted at the Missouri Historical Society, where I am the urban anthropologist. I will divide the class into four teams of three. Each team will be responsible for covering a separate category of the community in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood, in west central St. Louis. The categories that can be covered are varied, but could include: current residents; former residents; business people in the neighborhood; institutional people; or political leaders. Within guidelines, I will allow each team to determine the specific approach it wishes to take with its category. For instance, if the institutional group wishes to focus on a specific institution (St. Roch's Catholic Church; Crossroads School; Skinker-DeBaliviere Community Council would be three quite different options) and study it in depth, that would be fine. Or contrarily, if that group were to decide to study several groups less intensively, that would be another good option.

For each team, I will require the same criteria in terms of processing information. These requirements will form the basis for each member's final grade. The requirements are: construct a plan; conduct background research on the neighborhood segment; adapt an interview guideline to fit your segment's orientation; conduct phone interviews; construct a list of potential interviewees; conduct three interviews of at least one hour each; transcribe and audit a 5 page segment of each interview; create a final report; and make a group-based final presentation to the class. Some of these activities the group will conduct together; other activities, each member will conduct individually. I will assign both group and individual grades at the end of the semester. At the end of the semester, each of the four groups will make a class presentation of its findings. In addition, each member of each team will write an 8-10 page report that will detail his or her work within the team and analyze the issues and themes that he or she deems most significant in terms of the team's oral history project.

I want to emphasize that you will have available to you many resources for this class—the texts, the class discussions, personal help from me during my office hours, handouts, each other, members of the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood, and possibly some veterans from a former class. I encourage everyone to rely on as many of these resources as possible, because none of them alone will be sufficient for you to obtain an advanced grade.

The bottom line, however, is that only through hard work and persistent studying will anyone do well in this class. Since this is an upper-level class, my expectation is that students will be internally motivated and can conduct their team projects with initiative and intelligence. This said, I also stress that I will never abnegate my own responsibility to assist any team or any member of any team that asks for help.

I will be giving no scheduled test during the semester. However, if I sense that any segment of the class is not comprehending the basic oral history materials, I may determine that a test will be necessary. In that case, I will have to refigure the grade point allocations for the various requirements in the class, with the test assuming a major proportion of the final grade. There will be no comprehensive final. But note well: I do expect all students to retain essential understanding of all of the concepts from the readings and from the practical experience in the field, because those understandings will be crucial in performing well on your final report/presentation.

I will assess individuals' grades on three criteria: quality of work, personal commitment to teamwork, and completeness of work. Naturally, all work is expected to be completed during the semester. Beyond this basic expectation, all work is expected to reflect not only a ready familiarity with the material covered, but also an integration of the conceptual framework and the methodology with the oral history fieldwork. Thus, for instance, if a student were to attend all the classes, complete all of the oral history work, and turn in the assignments on time, yet demonstrate a poor understanding of the course content and/or an inability to relate the conceptual framework to the public component, then he or she would have satisfied the "completeness of work" requirement yet fail to satisfy the more essential "quality of work" requirement, and thus receive, at best, a "C" for class participation.
 

Any work turned in late will lose a full letter grade per week or any part of a week (i.e., anything turned in 1-7 days late will lose one letter grade, say from a B to a C; 8-14 days, from a B to a D; etc.). No work will be accepted after Dec 6, 2001.