January 19, 2007
Labinar Pedagogy Cluster, Spring 2007
The Pedagogy cluster will meet several times this semester, and is open to all who would like to be a part.
The pedagogy cluster will address fundamental issues of how to teach the Anthropology of the Contemporary at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. This means trying to answer the following questions:
- What are the central concepts, issues and ideas students must be introduced to, at the various levels of anthropological training, in order to understand and contribute to what we are calling the “Anthropology of the Contemporary”?
- What readings, literature and/or other material and equipment can serve as the basis for this pedagogy?
- Whare the methods best suited to teaching the anthropology of the contemporary?
During the Spring 2007 semester, we will attemp to answer these questions by focusing on two concrete projects:
- Course development.
We will develop two undergraduate courses, each aimed at offering students a founation in contemporary anthropological problems. The first course will be Anthropology 3AC: Introduction to Cultural(?) Anthropology, a course directed towards first and second-year undergraduates (including non-majors). The second will be Anthropology 156B: Anthropology of the Contemporary, an upper-division undergraduate course aimed at giving advanced anthropology majors an understanding of the issues pertaining to an anthropology of the contemporary.
- Bibliography project
As an offshoot of the above project, we will begin to create an archive of useful pedagogical materials.
Meeting Time(s) and Location
The first meeting will be Wednesday, January 31st at 4:20 in 311 Kroeber. We will be discussing Kevin Karpiak’s proposed design of Anthropology 3AC for the Summer 2007 semester. Kevin will give a brief overview of the course goals, and then we will turn to a discussion of the draft syllabus (see below) in light of pedagogical questions around the anthropology of the contemporary
[...] Due to a scheduling problem, the Pedagogy cluster’s first meeting will have to be put back a week–to Wednesday, February 7th. Same Bat time (4:20pm), same Bat channel (311 Kroeber), same Bat agenda… (see the old post: http://anthropos-lab.net/labinar/2007/01/labinar-pedagogy-cluster-spring-2007/) [...]
[...] work on a syllabus for an upper-level undergraduate class on the anthropology of the contemporary—as has been discussed before. Paul intends to teach such a class in the spring of 2008. I see us proceeding as [...]