Teaching | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Have Mobile Phones In the Classroom Reached Their Calculator Moment?

February 9, 2015 by Museum Fatigue

Last week, while reviewing our class syllabus on the first day, I made a decision to do a little experiment. Rather than make the announcement that mobile phones should be turned off during class, I did the opposite. I told my visual anthropology class that unrestricted use of mobile phones in class would be allowed this semester. Allowing all students to use their devices freely at all times seems very counterintuitive. In fact, even now I am concerned that in […]

Categories: Education, Higher Education, Teaching, Technology • Tags: calculator, classroom experience, iPhone, mobile phone, technology, TI-35

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

Class Lectures: The Content of the Form

January 26, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I just reviewed course evaluations from last semester. Overall they were quite positive and some had some useful feedback. My favorite comment: “The teaching style was my favorite. I’ve never seen anybody draw and write such illegible things that end up making me understand exactly what is being said. It’s quite funny to me.” It just so happens that I have an image from the class to which I think this student was referring. I am a firm believer that […]

Categories: Higher Education, Teaching • Tags: course evaluations, Hamine University, student evaluations

The Content of the Form

January 14, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I just reviewed course evaluations from last semester. Overall they were quite positive, with useful feedback. My favorite comment from my Development to Globalization class: “The teaching style was my favorite. I’ve never seen anybody draw and write such illegible things that end up making me understand exactly what is being said. It’s quite funny to me.” While I wouldn’t say all of my whiteboards are illegible, and I would tend to blame the low quality of whiteboards and markers […]

Categories: Development to Globalization, Teaching • Tags: course evaluations, student comments

The “Culture Wear” Assignment

November 23, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

This semester I have been teaching Introduction to Anthropology using an entirely different approach from previous years—one that puts the curiosity, focus, and experience of learning through “fieldwork” at the center. Rather than introducing the discipline through foundational terms, concepts and histories delivered through the common methods of reading, lecture, discussion and testing—my new class is built around a core of observation, note taking, interviewing and “writing-up” assignments that expect students to come to class every week having collected their own […]

Categories: Anthropology, Assignments, Introduction to Anthropology, Teaching • Tags: alienation, clothing, fashion, field assignment, production

Eating Uncrustables®, Eating Dog

November 4, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

A basic methodological assumption of anthropology is cultural relativism—that people in specific cultures have reasons for what they do that are contextually meaningful and that understanding of the things they do should be examined in context. Understanding aspects of what people do and explaining them cross-culturally—say in an undergraduate classroom, for example—is therefore an act of translation. Teaching anthropology can be tricky because it is easy for “far out” behaviors, from the perspective of students in the classroom, to simply be left […]

Categories: Anthropology, Food, Introduction to Anthropology, Teaching • Tags: Anthropology class, cultural relativism, eating dog, food culture, Sidney Mintz, translation, uncrustables®

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

iPad Apps For the Digital Professor

May 23, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Since getting my first iPad on the day it was released two years ago, I have enjoyed the challenge of experimenting with it in new ways—seeing how I can use it effectively in my daily work and professional life. This has involved trying lots of apps and removing lots of apps to see which ones stick around to become useful. It has also meant experimenting with the iPad in class or to document class work. Along the way I have […]

Categories: How To, iPad, Teaching • Tags: fieldwork, iPad, productivity, teaching, technology

“Never Seen Before”: A Senior Documentary Project

May 18, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

The film begins with a bit of disorientation—an institutional building, a cacophonous crowd, a group of men in soldier uniforms. Was that man carrying a giant sword? A woman with striking blue raspberry hair walks past, as the camera weaves through the crowd following a group of three young Hmong women up an escalator to a room where they transform themselves. In the next scene they emerge as a trio of characters from a Japanese animation, or anime. The mini documentary, Never Seen […]

Categories: Documentary, Popular Culture, Teaching • Tags: student projects

A Scent of Revolution from the Classroom

May 10, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

The past few years have been psychologically difficult ones to be teaching in higher education. Large scale economic doom has affected the average American’s personal wealth. Public disinvestment in civic infrastructure including higher education, combined with skyrocketing costs for things like healthcare, have pushed tuition prices ever higher. Employment worries. Debt. Some articles say the liberal arts are dead, while others say they a even more important than ever in a global economy. Is the university being corporatized? Is it a […]

Categories: Pilgrims, Travelers, Tourists, Teaching • Tags: humor, teaching