Visual Anthropology Class | MUSEUM FATIGUE

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

University at Snelling 20×20: A Petcha Kutcha Study

February 14, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

How can students in a senior seminar present ideas to the class in a low-stakes way that might enjoyable and, above all, fast enough that we can get through all of them with time for brief discussion at the end of class? After discussing photography for two weeks, I wanted everyone in class to actually take photographs—to do a brief study on a subject or theme—and present it to the class. Ideally the subject or theme would be related in […]

Categories: Teaching, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Anthropology, petcha kutcha, Photography, senior seminar

Reflections on Photography: Seeing and Feeling

February 9, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Roughly the first two weeks of this semester’s anthropology senior seminar we are taking a brief look at photography, perception and representation. My idea was that before we discuss visual anthropology or ethnographic film we should take some time to examine the human eye and the representational power of photography. Since different parts of anthropology broadly look at humans biologically (biocultural/physical anthropology) and as meaning-making creatures (sociocultural anthropology), I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose a biological/neurological description of […]

Categories: Teaching, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: camera lucida, Photography, roland barthes, senior seminar, visual anthropology

Explosion of Images: My Anthropology Senior Seminar Experiment

February 2, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

For the first time since I started at Hamline, our anthropology department is offering a senior seminar and I am the one lucky enough to be teaching it. With no history of offering such seminars, there is no set model to follow. Also, the senior seminar is only a requirement for anthropology majors who declare beginning this year, so the class has only attracted a small number of students—only seven students—the smallest class I have ever taught. Very exciting. Freed from […]

Categories: Teaching, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Anthropology, senior seminar, teaching, visual anthropology