Call for Participants: Humanistic and Qualitative Social Science Research Workshop on “Writing with Silence”

  • By: Shannon Landis

Writing with Silence:  Engaging with the Unspoken and Unspeakable in Humanistic and Qualitative Social Science Research Workshop

Organizers: Dr. Merav Shohet (Boston University) & Dr. Annemarie Samuels (Leiden University)

Date & Time: January 17, 2024, 2-5PM

Venue: BU Campus, location TBD

Whereas the social sciences and humanities have for a long time predominantly focused on what people say and do, scholars in and beyond anthropology are increasingly reflecting on the importance of including the unspoken and unspeakable in their analyses. They do so, among other ways, by articulating the politics of refusal to engage in dominant narratives, attending to the subtle ways in which silences are stitched into an individual’s and family’s narratives of care, and theorizing silence as a necessary part of remaking the rhythm of everyday life in the face of loss. In this workshop, we invite graduate and advanced undergraduate students to reflect on silences that they encounter in their ethnographic/humanistic research and encourage them to think through the ethical (im)possibilities of writing about silence.

How do we attune to the unspoken and possibly unspeakable in our respective research fields? When and how do we inquire into the silences of the people and archives we work with, and when do we refrain from probing their possible meanings? How do we balance the need to critically reflect on historical processes of silencing while respecting research participants’ narratives and omissions?

The workshop will include an introduction to ethnographic research and theory on silences and/in narratives, the presentation and discussion of participants’ prepared short reflections, and a writing exercise. Interested students are invited to complete this Google form by December  18, 2023. Selected participants will be notified of acceptance by December 21, 2023. Workshop participants will then be asked to send a brief reflection (max. 500 words) on how they have encountered, or expect to encounter, silence(s) in their respective research projects by 10 January 2024.

Related Readings

  1. Aithamon, Marielle. 2022. “Silence: A Predicament for Feminist Anthropology and Social Innovation.” Feminist Anthropology 3(2): 373-380.
  2. Allison, Jill. 2011. “Conceiving Silence: Infertility as Discursive Contradiction in Ireland.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 25(1): 1–21.
  3. Basso, Keith H. 1970. “‘To Give up on Words’: Silence in Western Apache Culture.” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 26(3): 213–30.
  4. Cassaniti, Julia. 2023. “The Sounds of Silence: Thai Meditative Practice for Personal and Political Change.” American Anthropologist 125(4): 888–91.
  5. Dragojlovic, Ana, and Annemarie Samuels. 2021. “Tracing Silences: Towards an Anthropology of the Unspoken and Unspeakable.” History and Anthropology 32(4): 417–25.
  6. Gammeltoft, Tine. 2016. “Silence as a Response to Everyday Violence: Understanding Domination and Distress through the Lens of Fantasy.” Ethos 44 (4): 427–447.
  7. Garcia, Angela. 2010. The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  8. Hartman, Saidiya. 2008. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 12(2): 1–14.
  9. Kidron, Carol A. 2009. “Toward an Ethnography of Silence: The Lived Presence of the Past in the Everyday Life of Holocaust Trauma Survivors and Their Descendants in Israel.” Current Anthropology 50(1): 5–27.
  10. McGranahan, Carole. 2016. “Theorizing Refusal: An Introduction.” Cultural Anthropology 31(3): 319–25.
  11. Pinto, Sarah. 2014. Daughters of Parvati: Women and Madness in Contemporary India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  12. Samuels, Annemarie. 2021. “Strategies of Silence in an Age of Transparency: Navigating HIV and Visibility in Aceh, Indonesia.” History and Anthropology 32(4): 498-515.
  13. Samuels, Annemarie. 2023. “Silence at the End of Life: Multivocality at the Edges of Narrative Possibility.” American Anthropologist 125(4):892-895.
  14. Shohet, Merav. 2021. Silence and Sacrifice: Family Stories of Care and the Limits of Love in Vietnam. Oakland: University of California Press.
  15. Shohet, Merav. 2023. “Silenced Resentments and Regrets: Aging in a Changing Kibbutz.” American Anthropologist 125(4): 896-899.
  16. Simpson, Audra. 2007. “Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘Voice’ and Colonial Citizenship.” Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue 9:67–80.
  17. Stevenson, Lisa. 2014. Life Beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  18. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1995. Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Boston: Bacon Press.
  19. Weller, Robert P. 2017. “Salvaging Silence: Exile, Death, and the Anthropology of the Unknowable.” https://hdl.handle.net/2144/24790.
  20. Weller, Robert. 2021. “Respecting silence: Longing, rhythm, and Chinese temples in an age of bulldozers.” History and Anthropology 32(4): 481–97.

BU Sponsors

ADF Humanities Fund

ADF Social Sciences Fund

Anthropology Department

BUCH

CISS

CURA

NEH DTP

WGS Program

WLL Department

View all posts