ANTH 460/Ethnographic Research Methods
Life History Assignment
Minnesota State University Moorhead/Dr. Roberts
25 points: Due in class on 5/1/13
See Chapter 3, Conducting A Life History Interview, page 33-44 in Angrosino’s book for guidelines. Also try to take look at the optional articles I linked to the online syllabus – Timeline
Interviews: A Tool for Conducting Life History Research ; and In Pursuit of Life Histories: The
Problem of Bias . Two more are the Step-By-Step Guide to Oral History and The Life Story
Interview . Even though they’re “old” (1999 and 1995 respectively) they’re still basic enough to be helpful. This stuff does not change that much people. Technology can only take us so far!
Okay, enough ranting.
As I said in class you should pick someone who you feel would be willing to open up and talk at length about their life. Like everything else in this class this exercise is simply intended to give you some experience working rather intensely with one individual and trying to find out as much about them as possible.

Carefully and deliberately select someone for a life history.

Write out a justification for your selection, e.g., what topic or theme led you to choose this person? Include this in your assignment when you turn it in. If you selected this person because of a specific topic don’t forget to do some background research on that topic before sitting down to talk with them.

When making contact with your informant, share your justification statement with her/him.
 Work up an informed consent form that specifies what you will do with the record of the interviews (you will either destroy it or entrust it to me and it will be stored securely in a locked cabinet). If you can record it and the interviewee agrees to that it will make your job easier – unless the recording device is a problem for them. Then forget it and get ready to take a lot of notes.
 Turn in a summary of your informant’s narrative and an analysis. I’m guessing somewhere in the range of 5-6 pages but as you know I don’t like to set page limits.

If you get a chance you should also try to look at Chapter 4: Analyzing Narrative Data.
Although I don’t want you to go to the lengths of writing out the transcript as Nancy
Redfern-Vance does but it simply shows how detailed the process of transcription can be.

Try to enjoy this assignment. If you select the right person then it should be a lot of fun.