Black Stories: Ownership, Definition, Protection, and Care

Beyond the Romance of the Field: A Community-Centered Course in Ethical Documentation, Blues Ecology, and Black Storykeeping

Course Overview

Instructor: Lamont Jack Pearley
Organization: Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation
Platform Affiliation: The African American Folklorist
Course Length: 12 Weeks
Course Format: Seminar / Workshop / Certificate Training
Delivery Mode: In-person, virtual, or hybrid

Course Build Structure

This course is built through three connected layers:

1. Weeks — the main course pathway for participants.

2. Modules — the 15 edited video lessons from the Beyond the Romance of the Field lecture.

3. Lessons — the individual learning pages inside each week, where participants watch the video, complete readings, respond to workbook prompts, and complete applied exercises.

Beyond the Romance of the Field is a community-centered course in ethical documentation, Blues Ecology, and Black Storykeeping. It prepares participants to approach fieldwork, oral history, cultural documentation, and archiving with care, accountability, and readiness.

This course challenges the idea that fieldwork is simply adventure, travel, access, interviews, or content gathering. Instead, it teaches that fieldwork is responsibility. It is preparation. It is consent. It is safety. It is reciprocity. It is stewardship.

Participants will learn how to move beyond romantic ideas of “the field” and into the real work of protecting stories, honoring communities, and handling cultural memory with care. The course centers the belief that Black communities must own, define, and protect our stories on our own terms.

The course is organized through a 12-week syllabus path and 15 video modules. The weekly path guides participants through the readings, assignments, workbook reflections, and final project. The video modules provide the teaching foundation through the Beyond the Romance of the Field lecture. The readings deepen the conversation, while the workbook reflections and applied exercises help participants move from theory into practice.

By the end of the course, participants will understand why fieldwork should not be romanticized as adventure or content gathering. They will learn to see fieldwork as accountability, care, and community responsibility. They will be able to apply Black narrative sovereignty to documentation and archival work, identify ethical issues in interviews, recordings, photographs, family archives, and cultural materials, and practice consent as an ongoing relationship.

Participants will also learn how to create a safety and emergency plan before entering the field, understand language, vernacular, kinfolk, and transmission as cultural knowledge, develop a reciprocity and community return plan, and handle field materials as cultural memory rather than content.

The final goal of the course is for each participant to complete a community-centered fieldwork or documentation plan that includes ethics, consent, safety, reciprocity, documentation, archival care, community return, and self-care.

The readings are part of this preparation. They are not assigned simply to be completed. They are meant to help participants become more responsible, more accountable, more careful, and more grounded in the work.

Read for responsibility.
Read for accountability.
Read for the people whose stories you may one day hold.
Read so that your fieldwork moves from romance to readiness, from extraction to protection, and from observation to care.

The Well Workbook

The Well workbook is the reflective companion to Beyond the Romance of the Field. It helps participants move from watching videos and reading course materials into ethical practice.

The course teaches that fieldwork is not extraction, tourism, or content gathering. The Well gives participants a simple framework for practicing another way:

Receive. Record. Return. Give back.

Each week, participants will use The Well to reflect on the video lesson, connect with the readings, complete applied exercises, and build their final Community-Centered Documentation Plan.

The Well Framework

Receive

Participants begin by asking: What did I receive from this lesson, reading, story, or discussion?

This step teaches participants to listen before collecting.

Record

Participants ask: What needs to be written down, documented, remembered, or handled carefully?

This step teaches that documentation is never neutral.

Return

Participants ask: What belongs back to the person, family, or community?

This step reminds participants that cultural memory should not be taken away from the people.

Give Back

Participants ask: How will I support, credit, protect, or serve the people connected to this work?

This step teaches that ethical fieldwork requires reciprocity, care, and responsibility beyond the recording.

How The Well Works in the Course

Each week, participants complete a short Well reflection connected to the video module, reading, and applied exercise.

A weekly Well page may include:

• Lesson title

• Key idea from the video

• Reading connection

• Receive prompt

• Record prompt

• Return prompt

• Give Back prompt

• Applied fieldwork task

• Final project connection

By the end of the course, The Well will help participants build their final Community-Centered Documentation Plan step by step.

The Well is not extra work. It is part of the practice. It helps participants move from learning into responsibility.