These provocative new essays redefine the goals, methods, and assumptions of qualitative and ethnographic research in composition studies, making evident not only the crucial importance of ethnographic research, but also its resilience as well. As "Ethnography Unbound makes evident, critical ethnographies are retheorizing their methodologies in ways that both redefine ethnographic practices and values and, at the same time, have begun to liberate ethnographic practices from the often-disabling stronghold of postmodern critique. Showing how ethnography works through dialogic processes and moves toward political ends, this collection opens the doors to rethinking ethnographic research in composition studies.

Stephen Gilbert Brown is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and author of Words in the Wilderness: Critical Literacy in the Borderlands, also published by SUNY Press.

Sidney I. Dobrin is Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida. He has published many books in composition theory, including the SUNY Press title, Natural Discourse: Toward Ecocomposition, (coauthored with Christian R. Weisser).