Category Archives: Main Story

Teaching Anthropology of/through Games, Part 2

In my last blog post, I described my recent course on “Anthropology of/through Games.” Students in the class played, analyzed, and designed games related to anthropological concepts, and they also used ethnographic techniques such as participant observation and interviews to understand participants’ experiences of games. In this post, I take a closer look at game-based pedagogy in theory and practice. read more…

  • dateSeptember 17, 2015
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  • posted byKrista Harper
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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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Assigned Readings: Strategies and Ponderings

To mark the beginning of the fall semester at most US colleges and universities, we would like to return to our series of blog postings by the Anthropology Teaching Forum (ATF) at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Here we … read more…

  • dateAugust 24, 2015
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  • posted byLeah McCurdy
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Thinking about and with “Selfies” in the Classroom

I often long for a classroom in which students eschew electronics in favour of pen and paper, a classroom that favours slow reading and reflection, rather than one where laptop, tablet, and phone use mean that note taking and distracted internet surfing often go hand in hand. But knowing that this is easier said than done, I am happy (at least for now) to settle for a learning environment in which students view their various electronic devices with curiosity rather than complacency, as cultural artifacts of a particular time and place, and of their use of these devices, and of social media, as culturally informed practices. read more…

  • dateJune 29, 2015
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  • posted byMaggie Cummings
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The Sexual Lives of Others

As a linguistic anthropologist, I turn my attention to the fact that sex is not only about, well, sex, but how people talk about sex. In Love Stories: Language, Private Love, and Public Romance in Georgia, I address a distinctive way of ordering sex, reproduction, and romance among the Khevsurs of Georgia. As a linguistic anthropologist, my goal was to use ethnography to illustrate the pervasive role of language in mediating some sphere of social life, in this case, sexuality. Language and sexuality are explored through the linguistic genres of romance such as conversation, poetry, and gossip. read more…

  • dateMay 25, 2015
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  • posted byPaul Manning
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