Search Results for: graphic adventures in anthropology

Learning Graphic Novels from an Artist’s Perspective

About five years ago, I was hit by a bolt of lightning. It happened on an otherwise normal workday, while I was struggling to tame what was becoming an increasingly unwieldy project. In a single bright flash, I pictured the entirety of my project in the form of a graphic novel. Establishing shots that parachute the reader into a specific place. Close-ups that bring the reader into the mind of a person. Simplifications that focus attention. Relationships among people inscribed in gestures, pose, action. Panels whose very internal composition and arrangement on a page move the reader through multiple perspectives. Pages whose layout make an implicit argument about how one thing is connected to another. In my mind’s eye, the exaggerated staging of sequential snapshots could lift my story out of the sticky slowness of explanation. read more…

  • dateFebruary 27, 2015
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  • posted byStacy Leigh Pigg
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“You’ve got to draw it if you want to see it”: Drawing as an Ethnographic Method

My teacher Linda Schele said those words to me years ago when teaching me about the iconography of ancient Maya sculptures. She’d given me an assignment: to make sense of the carved stone monuments from the ancient site Quirigua, in south-east Guatemala. All I had were photocopies of Alfred Maudsley’s 1880s photographs, and I was having trouble distinguishing meaningful elements from the convoluted Baroque tendrils and curls on these elaborate carvings. I brought my photocopies to her house, and the first thing she did was put one on a light-box, taping a sheet of tracing paper on top, saying, “You’ll never see a thing just staring at it on paper! You’ve got to draw it if you want to see it.” read more…

  • dateFebruary 20, 2015
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  • posted byAndrew Causey
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How I Learned to Love Comics: An Anthropology Editor Sees the Light

This post kicks off a new blog series called Graphic Adventures in Anthropology. Once a week for the next 6 weeks, a guest contributor will write about some aspect of graphic anthropology (and by “graphic” we mean drawing in general, and comics in particular), from visual culture to visual communication, and from ethnographic method to dissemination device, culminating in the announcement of a new series we are launching at the press called: ethnoGRAPHIC. Here’s the line-up… read more…

  • dateFebruary 12, 2015
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  • posted byAnne
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Getting Real and Making it Relevant: Teaching Introductory Anthropology

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
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  • posted bySarah Mahler
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The Last Word(s)

After 11 years at the University of Toronto Press, and over 6 years curating this blog, I’m stepping down, hanging up my hat, moving on (choose what euphemism you like). It has been a wonderful experience writing for an audience … read more…

  • dateApril 4, 2019
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  • posted byAnna
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