Browsing by Person "Burdett, Charles"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Ethnography and modern languages
(Liverpool University Press, 2019-01-07) Wells, Naomi; Forsdick, Charles; Bradley, Jessica; Burdett, Charles; Burns, Jennifer; Demossier, Marion; Hills de Zárate, Margaret; Huc-Hepher, Saskia; Jordan, Shirley; Pitman, Thea; Wall, Georgia
While rarely explicitly recognized in our disciplinary frameworks, the openness and curiosity on which Modern Languages in the UK is founded are, in many ways, ethnographic impulses. Ethnographic theories and practices can be transformative in relation to the undergraduate curriculum, providing an unparalleled model for experiential and holistic approaches to language and cultural learning. As a form of emplaced and embodied knowledge production, ethnography promotes greater reflexivity on our geographical and historical locations as researchers, and on the languages and cultures through which we engage. An ethnographic sensitivity encourages an openness to less hierarchical and hegemonic forms of knowledge, particularly when consciously seeking to invert the traditional colonial ethnographic project and envision instead more participatory and collaborative models of engagement. Modern Languages scholars are at the same time ideally placed to challenge a monolingual mindset and an insensitivity to language-related questions in existing ethnographic research located in cognate disciplines. For Modern Languages to embrace ethnography with credibility, we propose a series of recommendations to mobilize these new research and professional agendas.
Moving objects: Memory and material culture
(Liverpool University Press, 2020-12-01) Hills de Zárate, Margaret; Burdett, Charles; Polezzi, Loredana; Spadaro, Barbara
This chapter focuses on participatory ethnographic research and the role of objects as a vehicle of translation in relation to the transmission of Italian transgenerational identity in the Argentine province of Buenos Aires. It considers a series of objects, the narratives they embody and those they evoke within the context of events, discussion groups and individual interviews with narrator/participants who self-identified as being of Italian descent. I refer to these objects as ‘moving objects’ to include the performative and emphasise their shifting meanings through space and time but also their affective potential. As one thing or object leads to another in a chain of unfolding memories and associations, so, it would seem, does the past with the present and, in the case of the objects discussed, with a sense of what is Italian. With the exception of direct quotes, the terms ‘object’ and ‘thing’ are used interchangeably throughout to reflect a certain fluidity in their use by both participants and different authors.