Anthropology | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Keeping Class Real This Semester (and Perhaps Next Fall): Lessons From My Visual Anthropology Class

May 15, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

Yesterday afternoon, during my last session for this semester’s Visual Anthropology class, we had a summary conversation about the students’ experiences in our fractured pandemic semester. The students shared some interesting reflections on time and life and our class that were clearly divided into a before and after. Some of these comments offer valuable ideas for a possible Fall semester that is increasingly looking like it might be spent at least partially online. “Class Isn’t Real” Students at my small […]

Categories: Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Hamline University, Hamline University Anthropology Department, Midway Conversations, online teaching, remote teaching, Visual Anthropology Class

Midway Conversations 2016: Neighborhood Documentary Projects Premiere

May 16, 2016 by Museum Fatigue

Last night at the Turf Club the Spring 2016 Visual Anthropology Class screened a selection of the work they have been doing with their neighborhood partners this semester. As with previous years the work they shared illustrated the special relationship that many of them have developed with neighbors in the Hamline Midway. The neighbors shared stores, took them into their homes, introduced them to friends and family and demonstrated why our neighborhood is such a special place to live. This […]

Categories: Anthropology, Assignments, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Hamline Midway, Hamline University, Hamline University Anthropology Department, Hamline-Midway Neighborhood, Midway Conversations, neighborhood, neighborhood research

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Midway Conversations 2015: Neighborhood Documentary Projects Premiere

May 19, 2015 by Museum Fatigue

“We aren’t training to be filmmakers, but use our cameras to learn. Our neighbors have taught us so much.” This past Sunday afternoon our Visual Anthropology class hosted its fourth annual public screening and “thank you” party for our neighborhood—The Hamline Midway. While in previous years we had an early evening slot, this year the only time available was a late weekend afternoon. Despite this, however, we were very pleased to see nearly one hundred people in attendance. We ate […]

Categories: Anthropology, Assignments, Documentary, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Hamline Midway, Hamline University, Hamline University Anthropology Department, Hamline-Midway Neighborhood, Midway Conversations, neighborhood, neighborhood research

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Mobile Visual Ethnography Kit

February 18, 2015 by Museum Fatigue

Last year I posted a bit about the simple, mobile equipment that I have put together for the students in my visual anthropology class to use on their visual documentary projects. This year I have made a few updates that are worth a quick share. I’m still committed to using Zoom H1s for audio capture—there really isn’t a better recorder for the price—and I’m a big fan of the tripod/case accessory package that is available for the Zoom H1 on […]

Categories: Anthropology, Fieldwork, Gear, How To, Visual Anthropology • Tags: Canon VIXIA HF R500, FurryHead Windscreens, mobile equipment, visual ethnography, Zoom H1

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Good Food Class: Ramen Cookoff

November 15, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“In fact, instant noodles may well be the most successful industrially produced food, at least in terms of world penetration: they constitute a huge social reality—and one inviting attention. Much like sugar, instant noodles are a capitalist provision that provisions capitalism…Because they feed people quickly and cheaply, they appeal to busy and economy-minded people everywhere” (Errington, Fujikura and Gewertz 2013: 6). This last week our Good Food First-Year Seminar finished reading The Noodle Narratives: The Global Rise of an Industrial Food […]

Categories: Anthropology, Assignments, Food, FYSEM: Good Food • Tags: class activity, Deborah Gewertz, food, Frederick Errington, ramen, Tatsuro Fujikura, The Noodle Narratives

Essentializing Eastern and Western Culture Through Infographics

July 19, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

While going through some old files on my computer this morning I came across a file I had saved with a collection of graphic illustrations of differences between “Eastern” and “Western” culture. Drawn a few years back by a Chinese artist named Yang Liu in Germany, some of them are very humorous and thoughtfully executed. For folks who have experience crossing the differences between, say, China and Europe or the US, some of the images certainly seem to capture something useful. […]

Categories: Anthropology, Culture, Representation, Scripts • Tags: infographic, Liu Yang, The East, The West, visual culture, Yang Liu

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Midway Conversations 2014: Neighborhood Documentary Projects Premiere

May 21, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

On May 20th from 5:30-7:30pm at a local neighborhood venue, the Turf Club, this spring’s Visual Anthropology class premiered their final mini-documentary projects to a packed house of 100-120 people. This was the second such public event (the first was written about here) and the first to actually be pulled off during finals week at the end of the semester. Together the students, their collaborators and other interested neighbors, friends and family came together to enjoy the documentaries along with bags […]

Categories: Anthropology, Assignments, Documentary, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Hamline Midway, Hamline University, Hamline-Midway Neighborhood, Midway Conversations, neighborhood, neighborhood research

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Patrick Wilken’s Biography of Claude Lévi-Strauss

May 8, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I just finished a very enjoyable read—Patrick Wilcken’s biography Claude Levi-Strauss: The Father of Modern Anthropology. I picked it up used at a local Minneapolis Bookseller, Magers and Quinn late last week. Billed as “the first biography in English” of its subject, it was not something I could turn down. For years I have enjoyed teaching Tristes Tropiques in my Anthropology of Travel class—Pilgrims, Travelers and Tourists and I read some of his work in graduate school—but never really had an impression […]

Categories: Anthropology, Books, Nostalgia, Objects of Power • Tags: biography, Bororo, Brazil, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mato Grosso, Musée du quai Branly, Patrick Wilcken, structural anthropology, Tristes Tropiques

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Michael Taussig on Field Notebooks—I Swear I Saw This

March 17, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“I think of the hard work I have done and even more of all the waiting and boredom as not exactly irrelevant but as nothing more than a necessary prelude for chance to show its hand” (Taussig 2011:59). Last night I finished reading Michael Taussig’s reflections on drawings in anthropological field notebooks (namely his) in his 2011 book, I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own (University of Chicago Press.) Similar to my experience with most of his […]

Categories: Anthropology, Drawing, Fieldwork, Quotes • Tags: drawings, fieldnotes, Georges Bataille, I Swear I Saw This, Joan Didion, John Berger, Michael Taussig, notebooks, roland barthes, Walter Benjamin

HU Visual Anthropology Class in the Local Newspaper

March 14, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I was really excited an proud to see that this semester’s Visual Anthropology class got a writeup in this past Monday’s local newspaper. Mila Koumpilova, an education reporter at the Pioneer Press, visited our class the week before, sat through some student projects, interviewed students and then went to observe a filming session with a student and neighbor. Her article, “Film anthropology class bridges gap between Hamline U and neighborhood,” does a great job summarizing the history, goals and pedagogy of the class in a […]

Categories: Anthropology, Teaching, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Hamline University, Hamline-Midway Neighborhood, neighborhood, news, Robert Flaherty, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, student projects, Visual Anthropology Class