This practice based course provides students with the building blocks to learn how to apply an ethnographic approach to the research of humanitarianism. Humanitarianism has been typically studied from the Western aid-organizational perspective, as the historical progress of liberal global governance systems and of foreign aid to save and safeguard a particular understanding of human life. However, recent scholarship focuses on how new forms of humanitarianism are enacted locally by grassroots organizations, using ethical and moral registers that evade universalist and liberal notions of salvation and compassion. In this course, students will learn the tools to critically analyze multiple humanitarianisms, and how organizational, religious, and ethical systems shape a multitude of conceptions around “crisis,” “dignity,” “care” and “suffering” across divergent contexts. They will also learn different methods in ethnographic based inquiry: from interview based, to immersion and participant observation, to comprehend the ways ethnography is conducted in the context of humanitarian responses. Students will examine ethnographies of humanitarianism, as well as other mediums of representation such as documentary films, poetry, and formal Western and non-Western aid organizational reports to gain a multiplicity of perspectives on the conduct and experiences of humanitarian practices.