Category Archives: Miscellaneous

How to Make (Some) Anthro Stick: Teaching Introductory Anthropology

So you are planning your first Introduction to Anthropology course or you are considering an overhaul of this course. What do you do? In my previous blog post I suggested that you approach the course design from the perspective that you only have one shot to make this course relevant to most students. Know your audience, I recommend. I find that a third or more of my students arrive just to fulfill a social science requirement but, more importantly, almost every student arrives without ever having taken any social science in their K-12 years. Therefore, I tell my students how glad I am that they now have a chance to learn some social science, specifically anthropology. read more…

  • dateFebruary 25, 2014
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  • posted bySarah Mahler
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You’ve Only Got One Shot: Teaching Introductory Anthropology

“You’ve only got one shot” is what I continuously say to myself when planning for, and teaching, Introduction to Anthropology. If you pardon the military metaphor, you’ll find that there are truly solid and compelling reasons to treat Intro with missionary zeal… read more…

  • dateFebruary 24, 2014
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  • posted bySarah Mahler
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The Research Portfolio Project

I’ve experimented with several types of assignments over the years. The one I keep coming back to is the “research portfolio.” This requires students to begin amassing information on an ethnographic subject that interests them while reflecting on the way they learn. There is no final term paper. The idea is that the project doesn’t end with the class but continues indefinitely into the future… read more…

  • dateNovember 11, 2013
  • comments1
  • posted byJohn Barker
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Teaching “Collaboration” While Trying to Do It

How do you teach a course on collaboration that addresses the long history of the process in the discipline, and gets at what is new about its most recent incarnations? More significant still: How do you teach what is so important about the idea of collaboration in anthropology today, while also addressing the complex practicalities involved in trying to actually make it happen? read more…

  • dateNovember 1, 2013
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  • posted byAndrew Walsh
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Anthropology, Food, and Sustainability: Growing a Sense of Place on Campus

Look out across the grassy circle that serves as San Diego Miramar College’s campus center, and you won’t see very many students. Like many community colleges, ours is a commuter campus. Students drive to school, attend class, and more likely than not, hurry off to work, to pick up children from school, or to a class at another local college. As a professor of cultural anthropology, I’m interested in communities. As a sustainability leader on campus, I’m interested in my campus community in particular… read more…

  • dateOctober 16, 2013
  • comments5
  • posted byLaura Gonzalez
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