Tag Archives: Social Sciences

Collaboration as Innovation: A Brief History of University of Toronto’s Ethnography Lab

Innovations in Anthropology Series Welcome to the Innovations in Anthropology Series, a blog series devoted to profiling the teaching, production, and dissemination of anthropological knowledge. Whether it’s gamifying teaching, connecting a department to its local community, exploring multimodal methodologies, collaborating … read more…

  • dateFebruary 11, 2019
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  • posted byAnna
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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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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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The Book Price Enigma

Books add meaning to our lives. They are avenues of learning, research, escape, empathy, and connection, and this is a wonderful thing to support and nurture. This is why people work in publishing—to help build and shape intellectual and creative endeavor. Most of us aren’t here to make piles of money, but rather to contribute to an industry that is ultimately about ideas and narrative. Add the word “text” in front of “book” and most of this romanticism fades. read more…

  • dateMarch 8, 2013
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  • posted byAnna
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