Visual Anthropology Class | 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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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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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

University Avenue: One Street, A Thousand Dreams

January 15, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This morning, while doing some preparing for this spring semester’s visual anthropology class, I located an online posting of the locally produced documentary, University Avenue: One Street, A Thousand Dreams. The documentary, which premiered on our local Public Television Station in late 2012, provides a nice historical context for the area in which the Hamline-Midway neighborhood is located. Once again this semester, my students are going to do short video ethnographies of everyday life in the Hamline-Midway. I’m going to have them […]

Categories: Documentary, Urban, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: documentary, Hamline-Midway Neighborhood, Minnesota, Public Television Station, Saint Paul, TPT, University Avenue, Visual Anthropology Class

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Midway Conversations: A Neighborhood Documentary

October 27, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Last Wednesday night, Midway Conversations premiered at the Turf Club. The film was the final project of a collaborative neighborhood-based research project done by the Spring 2012 anthropology senior seminar at Hamline University. The premiere wasn’t without a few last-minute snafus—not least of which was a missing segment in the final copy of the film—but by about 5:45 the popcorn popper was full of hot popcorn and we had a high stack of Checkerboard Pizzas ready to serve. Following a brief introduction, the lights […]

Categories: Documentary, Teaching, Video clips, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Anthropology, Hamline Midway, Hamline University, Saint Paul, senior seminar, teaching film

Editing a Homework Film on iMovie for the iPad

March 12, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

This past week in the anthropology senior seminar we looked at narrative documentaries in anthropology and discussed issues of dramatization and aesthetics in John Marshall’s classic, The Hunters, and Robert Gardner’s Dead Birds. Both films were shot without sync sound equipment and feature both the heavy editorial hand of the filmmaker and a strong narrative voice (“Voice of God”) telling the story. In class we spent some time discussing the aspects of social life that cameras are good at capturing—things like movement, color, […]

Categories: How To, iPad, Teaching, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Anthropology, imovie, iPad, senior seminar, teaching, The Hunters, visual anthropology

Teaching Film: Streaming Films and Taking “Visual Notes” on the iPad

February 29, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Since the day my first iPad arrived nearly two years ago, I have enjoyed experimenting with it in my research and teaching. From the beginning I was impressed with the possibility that a single device could replace my lecture notes, deliver my Keynote presentations in class, store movie clips, file journal articles, keep ebooks, record field notes and just be fun. Initially I had planned to blog about my experiences, sharing things that I learned. I started out strong with […]

Categories: How To, iPad, Teaching, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: classroom experience, film, iPad, teaching, visual anthropology

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Man With A Flip Video Camera

February 23, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

This week the anthropology senior seminar moved from still images to moving pictures. We began reading Anna Grimshaw’s book, The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology, with her opening chapters on early film and ethnography. At the same time we waded into David MacDougall’s chapter “The Body in Cinema” in his book, The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography and the Senses. To these written texts, we added early short films by the Lumière Brothers. The primary film we used to […]

Categories: Teaching, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Anthropology, David MacDougall, man with a movie camera, nanook of the north, senior seminar

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