Tag Archives: culture

Ancestral Lines, Second Edition

At the core of the Teaching Culture series of ethnographies is John Barker’s Ancestral Lines: The Maisin of Papua New Guinea and the Fate of the Rainforest. This book has been tremendously successful in college and university classrooms because of its beautiful writing, its clear organization, and because it does not talk down to or bore students. This week, the book is available in a new edition, and we asked John Barker, the author and editor of the Teaching Culture series, to say a few words about its publication and the history behind the book. read more…

  • dateApril 4, 2016
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  • posted byJohn Barker
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Public Anthropology

To mark the publication of Public Anthropology: Engaging Social Issues in the Modern World, the author, Edward J. Hedican, provides us with a few thoughts on the impetus behind the book, why students can benefit from learning more about public anthropology, and some highlights of key anthropologists who are featured in the book. read more…

  • dateMarch 4, 2016
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  • posted byEdward J. Hedican
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Four Excerpts from a Four-Field Introductory Textbook

In the weeks leading up to the publication of Through the Lens of Anthropology: An Introduction to Human Evolution and Culture by Robert J. Muckle and Laura Tubelle de González, we posted four separate excerpts from the book on the main University of Toronto Press blog. We would like to round them up here for interested instructors. read more…

  • dateDecember 11, 2015
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  • posted byAnna
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Sharing Syllabi: Murder and Culture

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
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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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