The cupcakes have been eaten, the rhino gone to bed, and CASCA 2014 has come to an end. This year's organizers should be proud at the stellar lineup they put together. Conference-goers had plenty of options to keep busy. After all was said and done, though, it was ethnography that kept emerging as the major preoccupation of the conference—what is it, how does one do it well, and, in the end, does it matter? read more...

• DateMay 5, 2014
• commentsNo comment
• posted byAnne

The study of murder has been a mainstay in psychology and criminology departments for decades. This course was designed to add another piece to the puzzle: the cultural piece. This class takes a cultural look at murder, including how culture is involved leading up to a murder, how culture dictates the ways that murder is investigated, and how culture forms and influences the public’s reaction to murder. read more...

• DateMarch 13, 2014
• comments1
• posted byRebecca Ann Forrest

I survey my students on the first day of class to find out why they’ve come and from that data I know to treat their arrival as a gift. I’ve got just one chance to make anthropology relevant to their lives. If I try to treat them as potential colleagues—as anthropologists-in-the-making—I risk alienating them. That risk rises if I require them to read textbooks thick with hundreds of pages of abstract or alien information. Will all that “stuff” survive a few months’ brain storage let alone a lifetime? If not, then it might be better to get something anthropological to stick for their lifetime. In this blog post I provide a few concrete examples of the pedagogical approaches I use. read more...

• DateFebruary 27, 2014
• commentsNo comment
• posted bySarah Mahler