MUSEUM FATIGUE

Making Zongzi

June 20, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

While walking in some of the back streets of Nanjing just days before the Duanwu Festival I came upon a woman preparing zongzi for sale. I have eaten the bamboo leaf-wrapped rice many times over the past two decades, but until then had never seen how they were made. I was fascinated by how the simple ingredients of rice and red beans were deftly filled and wrapped by her experienced hands. It took her about half a minute to make […]

Categories: Food, How To, Video clips • Tags: China, cooking, food, zongzi

“Trash Values” or “How a Local Newspaper Made Me a Customer Against My Will and Littered All Over My Neighborhood”

May 28, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

What is litter? What is trash? One could look for a definition given by an esteemed dictionary or Wikipedia, but we all know it when we see it. Trash is something we don’t want. It is waste. It pollutes. Its persistence in our environment makes us uncomfortable. We bag it and stick it in bins in our garages or alleys. It disappears in the early morning—picked up by unknown workers and removed to hidden places most of us will never see. […]

Categories: Random Reflections • Tags: consumption, corporate culture, neighborhood, trash

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

Reimagining Campus Space: Fantasy as Social Practice

May 2, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can “invoke” or not. Haunted places are the only ones people can live in—and this inverts the scheme of the Panopticon. — Michel de Certeau,The Practice of Everyday Life “…fantasy is now a social practice.” —Arjun Appadurai, “Global Ethnoscapes” In his book, The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau describes how the tactics of everyday life resist the strategic efforts of […]

Categories: Pilgrims, Travelers, Tourists, Teaching • Tags: Michel de Certeau, pedagogy, sociocultural anthropology, teaching, tourism

Mystery Object #2: Arby’s Sauce Dispenser

April 27, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Sometimes mystery objects can be right in front of my face—camouflaged by their ubiquity. All it takes is just the right moment, when my guard is down and then suddenly I see them for what they really are. This is definitely what happened last week when I came upon this amazing object. I had been walking back along University Avenue after shooting a collection of photos of the light rail construction when I suddenly realized how hungry I was. I […]

Categories: Food, Mystery Objects • Tags: food

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

“Visual Notes” with iPhoto for the iPad

March 10, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Just days after posting a long description of teaching film with the iPad that discussed streaming ethnographic film, taking visual “notes”, and presenting them during class discussions, Apple announced iPhoto for the iPad. I purchased the application the evening it was released and immediately I realized it would improve upon the way I organize and present my “visual notes” during class discussions. As I described in my earlier post, it is really easy to use the iPad to make screen captures of […]

Categories: How To, iPad, Teaching • Tags: classroom experience, film, iPad, iphoto, teaching, teaching film, 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