Tag: teaching

So, I Buried My Anthropology Class Alive…

January 30, 2021 by Museum Fatigue

After my previous post about teaching a class in Minecraft, I had hoped that right now I would be excitedly tapping-out a follow-up post filled with cool descriptions and anecdotes of success. Sadly, as things turned out, on the second day of the semester I frustratingly entombed my entire class together in the fiery rocks of The Nether. Some backstory. When we started our second class it was clear that the Minecraft experiment had generated some heat. Students seemed engaged […]

Categories: Digital Anthropology, Teaching • Tags: mineclass, Minecraft, teaching

Simulating Victor Turner’s Liminal of Pilgrimage on Campus

February 22, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Every other year I offer one of my favorite and longest-running classes, Pilgrims, Travelers and Tourists—a class which surveys different genres of travel and voyaging historically and cross-culturally. Since travel and movement—questions of who travels, where, why and how—are central to the experience of being a person these days, I find the interesting theories and cases we examine in class to be easy for students to connect to their everyday experiences. Studying something as interesting and exciting as travel—something that is so […]

Categories: Anthropology, Assignments, Education, Pilgrims, Travelers, Tourists, Space • Tags: assignments, campus space, liminal, pedagogy, Peter Haakon Thompson, pilgrimage, spatial practice, teaching, university, Victor Turner, www.tentservices.org

“Keep Your Anthropologist Hat On and Don’t Be a Weirdo”: Comments from my Intro to Anthropology Finals

December 19, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

Since doing field exercises was an important part of this semester’s newly redone Introduction to Anthropology class, on the final I decided to ask a short essay question about fieldwork. The question asked students to comment on the experience of doing the class field exercises, the contradictions of participant-observation and the challenges of the fieldworker-as-data-collector. I had some trepidation asking complex questions of fieldwork to a class of mostly first-years. After a semester of weekly assignments, however, I assumed they […]

Categories: Anthropology, Introduction to Anthropology • Tags: anthropologist, Anthropology, Anthropology class, context, essay question, field assignment, fieldwork, final exam, participant-observation, sociocultural anthropology, student comments, teaching, undergraduate teaching

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

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

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

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