Tag Archives: anthropology

Teaching Anthropology of/through Games, Part 1

In part one of this two-part series, Krista Harper (UMass Amherst) provides insight into her successful Fall 2014 course, “Anthropology of/through Games.” There is so much here that is useful for instructors (as well as gamers). Enjoy! read more…

  • dateSeptember 15, 2015
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  • posted byKrista Harper
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Announcing ethnoGRAPHIC: A New Series

Well, we’re just about finished our Graphic Adventures in Anthropology, and now that we have you primed, we’re thrilled to announce a new book series here at the University of Toronto Press called ethnoGRAPHIC: Ethnography in Graphic Form. Whether you are an aspiring artist, or just interested in the possibilities of this format as both a methodology and a unique way of communicating your research results, we welcome expressions of interest and discussions about potential collaborations. It’s a brave new world out there, and we’re convinced that many academics want to be more creative in how they reach their audiences. We hope this series will harness some of that creativity. read more…

  • dateApril 20, 2015
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  • posted byAnne
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Fieldwork Cartoons Revisited

In 1989 when conducting fieldwork in Masset, Haida Gwaii, I complemented my standard social anthropological toolkit of camera, cassette tapes (before the days of digital), and field notebooks with a small black sketchbook—my cartoon book. This proved to be a rewarding and useful means to tell an immediate story about fieldwork, drawn late at night, and before any photographs could be developed. I used the cartoons to start conversations with Haida community members, and we shared perspectives on the events I depicted—from the ordinary to the celebratory. read more…

  • dateMarch 23, 2015
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  • posted byGillian Crowther
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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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