Adapted from Training the Next Generation of Fieldworkers by Randy Williams, Utah State University

Students, faculty, and support staff of the 2017 Field School of Cultural Documentation at the historic BarBC Dude Ranch in the Grant Teton National Park. Andrea Graham, Bethany Budge, Rebecca Westrup, Carol Nicholas, Jessica Cushenberry, Shelley Jones, Anthony Ross Garner, Liz Setterberg, Randy Williams, Guha Shankar, Amelia Mathews-Pett, Kylie Schroeder, Rebecca Goodson, Lisa Gabbert, Maggie Kruesi, Alexander Holden, Lori Hyde, Jeannie Banks Thomas, CJ Guadarrama.

The field school is an intensive, multi-week, residential workshop designed to provide students with basic ethnographic fieldwork skills, including participant observation, interviewing, field notes, ethics, and archiving best practices.

Shannon Dennison, Grand Teton National Park cultural resources branch chief, suggested the project. Dennison and Betsy Engle, GTNP Architectural Historian, met with students to give historical context and park concession information. 

[During the field school] students worked collaboratively in teams of two or three to document the traditions of the Turner family, guests and workers. The hands-on, in situ nature of ethnographic field schools are an important element of folklore training. Students learn by doing and exploring. Building on this, Margaret Kruesi noted that fieldwork training is essential to the fields of academic and public folklore.

“There is no substitute for students’ first-hand experiences of interacting with members of the communities, in this case, the dude ranching community, learning about material culture, for example, through Mr. Harold Turner’s story about his belt buckle hand-crafted as a gift from a hunting camp guest,” she continued. “While they develop skills in documentary photography and interviewing, students benefit from receiving immediate feedback from faculty. At the American Folklife Center, where we have over 20 years’ experience partnering with universities and folklore organizations in field schools for cultural documentation, we have seen field school students become committed to the field of folklore. They are folklorists and faculty currently training a new generation of field workers.”

Lisa Gabbert concurred saying that she thinks field schools are a great idea and that there should be more of them.

“Having done two field schools now, I think the field school model is an excellent way to train students. It provides real-life skills and experiences, and significant collaborative work on a meaningful project that is well beyond the scope of what a student could accomplish individually on his or her own,” Gabbert said. “The student to faculty ratio is quite small, students receive a lot of one-on-one mentoring, and they also get to interact with professionals at a national level.”

Gabbert said that in terms of this field school specifically the students did really excellent documentary work on an important but somewhat neglected aspect of the western experience.

“This collection will become important not only to the Turner family, but to the historical record because it provides insight into the day-to-day operations and experiences of dude ranching as such experiences emerge in the lives of owners, guests and employees,” she said.

Guha Shankar said the Cultural Documentation Field School in Grand Teton National Park provided a unique opportunity for scholars at the beginning stages of their professional careers to experience first-hand the excitement, challenges and rewards of carrying out ethnographic field research.

“There is not, in my experience as an ethnographer and teacher, any training methodology that can reproduce the profound understandings of cultural difference, place-making and community formation that arise out of an immersion into this sort of experiential, first-person cultural work,” said Shankar.

The field school was generously funded by Utah State University English Department, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Utah State University Library, University of Wyoming-National Park Service Small Grants Program, the University of Wyoming American Studies Program, the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund and the Utah State University Mountain West Center for Regional Studies.

Field School faculty: Drs. Margaret Kruesi and Guha Shankar, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress; Andrea Graham, Folklife Specialist, American Studies Program, University of Wyoming; Dr. Lisa Gabbert, Director, USU Folklore Program, and Randy Williams, Fife Folklore Archives Curator and Oral History Specialist, Utah State University

Field School students: Utah State University: Bethany Budge, Jessica Cushenberry, A. Ross Garner, CJ Guadarrama, Michelle (Shelley) Jones, Amelia Mathews-Pett, Kylie Schroeder, Elizabeth Setterberg; University of Wyoming: Rebecca Goodson, Alexander Hodel, and Rebekah Westrup

Support Staff: Dr. Jeannie Thomas, English Department Head, Carol Hatch, Lori Hyde, and Annie Nielsen, Business Manager, Utah State University

Bethany Budge and Triangle X Ranch employees at the cookout, August 6, 2017

“This is when you really understand the job or culture you are learning about. You also play to your strengths by being aware of what you know and what you don’t know...If you are not informed about something ask, do not pretend that you do...Our team tried to play to our strengths in interviews to understand more and be able to follow-up or ask questions that others might not be able to fully understand.” (Bethany Budge, USU Student)

Ross Garner taking a break at the AMK Ranch, Grand Teton National Park, July 31, 2017

“More than recording the place-specific knowledge of the Triangle X and making it accessible to others, the Utah State University and University of Wyoming Folklife Field School demonstrated how the tools of folklore and archiving can touch, at least tangentially, on the emotional center of human experiences and help capture, preserve, and clarify the specific details and larger themes that make life meaningful...And while these insights might be nothing new to those on the Triangle X, they may prove useful to the National Park Service in determining the future role the ranch will play as a concession in the Grand Teton National Park’s cultural landscape.” (Ross Garner, USU Student)

CJ Guadarrama at the Triangle X corral, August 1, 2017

“The amount of information that I learned about metadata and conducting professional interviews was second to none...Although it is nice to be back home, I sometimes fantasize about being back on the ranch, conducting more interviews; it was a truly wonderful place.” (CJ Guadarrama, USU Student)