http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/teachinglearninganthro/rss Recent eScholarship items from Teaching and Learning Anthropology Fri, 15 May 2026 08:37:39 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0b8190wm <p>The careful transcription of socially-occurring speech can be usefully incorporated into undergraduate classes in linguistic anthropology through in-class practice, discussion, and, especially, as a formal assignment. Teaching transcription—a key method for professional linguistic anthropologists—is particularly effective for engaging students in active learning of key disciplinary principles, as well as promoting critical (self-)awareness of, and reflection on, sociolinguistic practice. As students’ written reflections on transcription assignments show, teaching close transcription contributes to deepened understandings of the fundamental characteristics and complexities of human speech, the key roles language plays in social interaction and inequality, and how they might apply these lessons toward greater social justice beyond the class.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0b8190wm Tue, 27 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Strand, Thea R. Wroblewski, Michael https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ck284sp <p>This article examines how teaching and learning ethnographic methods could be adapted to contemporary times, considering shifting understandings of ethnography and practical attention to the experiences of new fieldworkers. Using the European Field Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as a case study, we identify several pedagogical techniques, including a cohort-based learning model, peer mentoring, and group blogging, to support students in navigating the practicalities and challenges of fieldwork. We argue that these techniques cultivate a collaborative learning environment and enhance first-time fieldwork experience despite the physical distances fieldwork typically implies.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ck284sp Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Saluk, Seda Urla, Jacqueline Harper, Krista https://escholarship.org/uc/item/20v4z9c1 <p>This paper discusses a project to develop an introductory course in Cultural Anthropology that prioritizes accessibility. Drawing inspiration from Universal Design for Learning and other teaching strategies, we explore ways of making course materials, content delivery, and assessments more accessible for students with different needs and abilities. We also consider accessibility from the perspective of instructors with disabilities, a topic that has received less attention in the literature. We discuss the use of varied classroom activities to increase engagement and participation, different forms of expression, adaptive technologies, and evaluation components that anticipate and mediate barriers to learning while enabling students to connect the course content to their lived experiences. We conclude with a discussion of challenges and future considerations.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/20v4z9c1 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Li, Fabiana Francis, Tasheney Quadri, Salmah https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1zz9s7s3 Review of&nbsp;Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies (2023) and First Time Home (2021) by Seth M. Holmes https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1zz9s7s3 Wed, 24 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Shaw, Jennifer E. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9ht8k24q <p>Photovoice is a research and teaching tool designed to document personal experiences and elicit applied discussions. In the classroom, photovoice brings theoretical concepts to life, empowers students to become co-creators of knowledge, sensitizes students to a range of city experiences, and is adaptable to unforeseen events. Photovoice also connects students to a place and community as both insiders and tourists; and beyond exams, papers, and assigned readings, photovoice starts new and experiential conversations on a course’s key topics. Examples from classroom experience will be shared.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9ht8k24q Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Widener, Patricia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9ft839kd Review of Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education by Sharon Stein https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9ft839kd Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Abell-Selby, Emma https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9684c0f1 <p>Human-animal co-habitation is a fact of urban existence, yet animals are illegible in the contemporary American city. As climate change, development, and other planetary forces disturb the more-than-human dynamics of cities, often gravely, anthropological pedagogy must go beyond rehearsing urbanicity as a strictly human quality. This article ruminates on an interdisciplinary experiment in teaching the animal city through a local project in design anthropology that coupled ethnographic fieldwork and speculative design. By empirically studying how the built environment unevenly mediates human and animal livelihoods and relations, students uncovered the possibilities of alternative architectures for nonhumans and curated them in a public design exhibition. Through research-based action, this course cultivated a body of dispositions in students that did not just expose the city’s animals but oriented them to the pursuit of multispecies justice—an ethico-aesthetic praxis that I... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9684c0f1 Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Fadok, Richard Alexander https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8pj1k0mm <p>Written by a teacher and two students in an undergraduate course titled Housing: Planning and Policy, this commentary explores screenwriting as a pedagogical device used in service of experiential learning about the city in the classroom. It reflects on the employment of this device over two semesters wherein ethnographic vignettes were drawn upon to iteratively craft scripts, with fictional interventions guided by critical frames derived from the learning objectives of the course. We highlight the usefulness of screenwriting as a tool to embrace the urban as a becoming-space in the classroom, wherein students: 1) freely express their encounters with the built environment and feed them into the process of learning by doing; 2) immerse themselves in the ongoing city politics outside the classroom; and 3) appreciate the entangled realms of policy, governance, markets, bureaucracy, and media. Our experiments with screenwriting have been inspired by anthropological research that... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8pj1k0mm Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Mittal, Harsh Sarker, Anamika Singh, Aditya https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8h10g5m7 <p>As part of a recent undergraduate seminar on infrastructure, students completed weekly exercises dubbed “infrastructure fieldnotes.” Going beyond conventional discussion board posts or reading responses, exercise prompts incorporated reading analysis, methods practice, writing prompts, and experiments in multimodal representation as students engaged with urban planning and quotidian experiences of infrastructure and made sense of the infrastructures that enable and structure city life. In this research article, the instructor for the course offers a preliminary presentation of the assignment’s structure and pedagogical objectives, followed by an analysis of how some prompts influenced classroom discussions by creating common points of reference and revealing different experiences of the campus and city. This discussion is followed by five student contributions on different aspects of the assignment. Some take up specific prompts to demonstrate how they created openings for... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8h10g5m7 Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Ross, Scott Groth, Alexandra Shah, Swasti Sterner, Anissa Francis, Abigail Graham, Denali https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8dj5h27t <p>Over the past few decades, scholars and educators have challenged the traditional focus of architectural history on styles and formal features, placing more emphasis on user experience. This experience, however, is not common to all. Each sector of society understands, inhabits, and utilizes architecture differently, leading to divergent ways of performing one’s identity within the city. For example, unhoused people are often excluded from full participation in public life. This commentary shares an experiment that complements an architectural history course with a set of assignments where students engage with sociopolitical aspects of the built environment through mapping and analyzing anti-homeless, hostile design in Eugene, Oregon.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8dj5h27t Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Mohammadzadeh Kive, Solmaz https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xs4183k <p>Co-written by bachelor students and their lecturer, this commentary is a critical reflection on the Materiality and Urban Politics (SOC387) course taught at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul in the summer of 2022. The course unfolded during a time of political unrest at Boğaziçi following the appointment of a new president, which brought the campus under a state of police siege. In this context, SOC387 explored relations between the material and the urban/political through democratic and inclusive pedagogical approaches. Bringing together reflections on the sociopolitical context in which the course took place, classroom pedagogies, and students’ commentaries, we reflect on how the course helped participants redefine their sense of belonging to, and engagement with, Istanbul’s urban/political environment during a time of perceived disempowerment and “crisis of democracy” in Turkey. By exploring the productive tensions between urban space, politics, and democratic pedagogy, this... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xs4183k Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Akın, Öykü Aras, Altan Erdem Barut, Bera Erkam Buhara, Elif Neşe Cebe, Ali Kartal, Turgut Keskin, Tuna Sansone, Rosa https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sb3r8pc <p>This article details and reflects on how student learning was elevated to a new level through inviting real life into the classroom of a course in cultural understanding, aimed at engineering students at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. In preceding years, the learning was organized as two group assignments where students authored a make-believe narrative, wherein a technical project was accomplished in collaboration with a foreign party. This year, the students’ second project was a collaboration with social science students from the West University in Timișoara. The students not only learned facts about Romanian culture, but, more importantly, they became immersed in culture as an experience and a process, observing a turn from culture understood as a reified scientific entity, to culture as an environment or lifeworld. Rather than trying to approach culture at a distance, distance itself became the students’ environment. Only as the students came to accept... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sb3r8pc Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Berntsen, Alexander Fyhn, Håkon Thomassen, Hans Martin Berge, Trond Dinca, Melinda https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g64z8p1 <p>This article employs Indigenous urbanism as an analytical approach, as developed by Anishinaabe and settler scholar Heather Dorries (2023), to show how pedagogical interventions employed in the teaching of an undergraduate course at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) contributed to an enhanced theorization of the city. It discusses the ways in which pedagogical activities shaped the students’ understanding of historiography, Indigenous urban lives, and the construction of shared urban spaces. In focusing on the local histories, territorialities, and specificities of Montreal as a shared and continuously renegotiated Indigenous-settler space, pedagogical interventions used in the course prompted students to reflect on how their own positionality coproduces knowledge about the city. Understanding themselves as knowledge makers, and thus co-producers of urban spaces, students were able to better define the contours of their own relations to the Montreal urban spatialities... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g64z8p1 Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Radu, Ioana https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6f05r3gf <p>This article explores how teaching Urban Anthropology can engender new relationships between cities, students, and classrooms. We discuss the generative connections between these actors as processes of becoming, which connect students with practices and theories for understanding urban life. Serving also as an introduction to a Special Issue on “Teaching the City,” this article introduces the issue’s pieces, which discuss teaching and learning across three continents. It also reflects on their collective contributions as an opportunity to think anew about the city through teaching. The four authors of this piece contributed equal labor.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6f05r3gf Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Panetta, Claire Radonic, Lucero Scheld, Suzanne Storey, Angela D https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69k1g8pf <p>In the current educational environment, students need transferable skills not only to graduate but also to be well-prepared for their futures. Starting in 2017, the Cleveland Institute of Art required all incoming first-year students to take a 3-credit “Engaged Practice” course intended to facilitate collaborative work between students and artists and designers outside of the institution with a variety of industry and community partners. As part of this initiative, I created a course entitled Applying Anthropology to teach art students the foundations of cultural anthropological field research methods and to show how those methods can be useful to artists and designers when working in a collaborative environment. Students worked with partners at several local organizations to collect life histories and stories and to then design and implement collaborative art projects with those partners. After three semester-long iterations of this class, I show how the outcomes of teaching... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69k1g8pf Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Hoag, Elizabeth https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4n64k088 <p>In this essay, I reflect on my own experiences as a graduate student in applied anthropology working in the context of ongoing higher education legislation implemented under the DeSantis administration in the state of Florida. In particular, I focus on the ways Florida’s House Bill 7 and Senate Bill 266 have impacted my experiences as a graduate student teaching general education courses in anthropology. This commentary argues that these laws have promoted a culture of uncertainty and precarity by disrupting the academic freedoms of people in teaching positions, while potentially undermining critical and creative thinking in the classroom.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4n64k088 Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Abell-Selby, Emma https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3qx2r64k <p>Government developers have put up yet another portion of Harlem’s 125th Street for redevelopment. After a 2012 government-sponsored call for development proposals, state developers selected the National Urban League (NUL), a civil rights and urban advocacy organization that serves African Americans and other underserved communities, and Hudson Companies, Inc. for a $242 million development project—the Urban League Empowerment Center (ULEC), which will include the NUL as the lead tenant and will be accompanied by various retailers, other nonprofit organizations, and housing units. In this student showcase essay, I reflect on my experience writing an opinion piece in an urban sociology course about the construction of the ULEC and the story of cross-sector urban development behind it. By bringing primary source documents and relevant course readings into conversation with each other, I was able to revise my understanding of the hidden layers of urban development and the actors... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3qx2r64k Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Thomas, Menasha https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3bn45381 <p>This student showcase essay explores how researching the city informs learning about the city. In it, I examine my senior thesis project for the urban studies program at Barnard College, in which I argue for the use of container farms to expand urban agricultural education opportunities in career and technical education settings. I review my research process, results, and the argument I developed about Perkins Act funding being essential to such programs. Through my commentary, I demonstrate how completing an urban-focused thesis can change students’ perceptions of the urban built environment.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3bn45381 Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Layfield, Carina Rose https://escholarship.org/uc/item/39d9k4fm <p>In Spring 2021, I taught Urban Anthropology entirely online. In lieu of the interviews, participant-observation, and neighborhood tours I normally would have included in the syllabus, I asked students to carry out a series of visual exercises in their local neighborhoods to document what it was like to live through the lockdown period of the pandemic. In retrospect, I have begun to think about how utilizing a multi-sensory approach to ethnography during this time might have produced even richer insights about urban life.&nbsp; In this commentary, I consider how while focusing on one sense, the visual, still allowed us to create an excellent snapshot of life in Indianapolis during the lockdown, utilizing more of our senses in representing local neighborhoods would have encouraged us to think even more deeply about how cities, like all human environments, are always in flux and responding at any given moment to a wide range of pressures, constraints, and opportunities.</p><p>&nbsp;</p... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/39d9k4fm Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Hyatt, Susan B. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2vh4x8t7 <p>Tidal Cities was an interdisciplinary, transnational experiment that brought together an environmental anthropologist, an urban geographer, and two landscape architects/artists. We aimed at co-creating a visualization-based pedagogical tool for contemplating and teaching manifold relations between the city and the sea, drawing on ethnographic material from Metro Manila and Jakarta. The project was designed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its digital format integrated an immersive role play component to spark further debate among tertiary students. Players were encouraged to critically reflect on and engage with trajectories and contestations around coastal planning and urban placemaking, particularly in spaces of informality beset by recurrent flooding, tenurial insecurity, and dispossession. While engaging with the poetics and politics of 2D visual representation, we reflect on the thinking behind the game´s pedagogical co-design and a number of paradoxes that arose from... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2vh4x8t7 Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Siriwardane-de Zoysa, Rapti Herbeck, Johannes Bimbao, Jose Antonio Rathod, Divya https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2m0561m2 <p>This commentary describes a pedagogical experiment in youth-led, open-source learning design carried out between Autumn 2022 and Spring 2023 while I was teaching in the University of Chicago’s Colonizations sequence. “Colonizations” is one among several sequences that undergraduate students can elect to take to satisfy their College Core requirement in “Civilization Studies.” Using an iterative “Design a Learning Module” assignment sequence – comprising both a mid-quarter and final submission together with an in-class introduction to principles of curriculum design – I structured the learning pathway to achieve three outcomes: first, to create experiential learning opportunities for students to engage with curriculum design principles through the hands-on creation of an online learning module; second, to expose students to open-source, creative-commons alternatives to dominant, colonial forms of proprietary knowledge; and last, to provide students with tools to analyze, interpret,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2m0561m2 Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Babcock, Joshua https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2cz6t8qk <p>Conceptual artist Rafa Esparza argues that adobe bricks are loaded with meaning and represent ethnic Mexican heritage and communion with land through Chicanx ritual labor. Our ethnographic experiences in northern New Mexico and our pedagogical and research work in experimental archaeology in California confirm Esparza’s assertion. Among traditional Chicanx villages in New Mexico, adobe construction serves to reinforce community relations. Among Chicanx college students, constructing experimental earthen ovens in the California laboratory creates new student communities and validates familial and social memories of adobe making in ancestral homelands. Bringing together initially separate research threads, we consider adobe’s culturally sustaining capacity and its potential in scientific archaeological research as inextricable facets of the same research-teaching system we now call ChicanXperimental archaeology. This article plants three interrelated seeds in that vein, offering... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2cz6t8qk Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Gonzalez, Albert David Vo, Hai Ramos, Nathaniel Ruscitti, Audria Day-Hernandez, Marina Morgan, Steven Ramoneda, Tiffany https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2241m4wb <p>How do airy materials constitute the urban? This is an anthropological question that has been of interest to me as I teach in a university campus in Northern India. Surrounded by agricultural fields and national highways, the campus is at least 60 km from the city of Delhi—infamous as the most polluted place in the world. My ability to notice how air pollution constituted Delhi peaked during a lecture with undergraduate students in late October 2019, when I was informed that they were being forced to sit in the bad air in my classroom because the student body’s request to cancel classes on account of air pollution had been denied. This moment has remained etched in my memory as it led to a long conversation in class about what it means to live with air through breath. Since Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence is a residential university, I wondered how air quality was constituting how students related to living on campus. In acknowledging the agentive quality of air, I use this... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2241m4wb Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Bhojvaid, Vasundhara https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0x66g545 Review of Cool Anthropology: How to Engage the Public with Academic Research, edited by Kristina Baines and Victoria Costa https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0x66g545 Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Donnelly, Meghan R https://escholarship.org/uc/item/06s5x85d <p>As a graduate student team from an applied anthropology course series, we conducted a yearlong community research project focused on an urban park for a local city government partner. This paper reflects on how learning and working as an applied, interdisciplinary team impacted our research process, our project design, and our experiences as students. Through the project, we experienced the benefits and challenges of collaborative work, like working through different disciplinary expectations and training styles, communication challenges, and equitable work distribution. Our unique positionalities and backgrounds shaped how we engaged with the park, the community, and the research. We all experienced the city for ourselves—through hands-on engagement—and learned about many different park experiences through a novel combination of techniques, including observations, interviews, a survey (with an embedded map feature), and a community design charrette. We engaged with a variety... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/06s5x85d Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Labadorf, Beth Ann Borgelt, Taylor Reynolds, Gina Gurganus, Kayla Kim, Seohyung Olawolu, Waire https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7z4029vn Review of Applying Anthropology to General Education: Reshaping Colleges and Universities for the 21st Century. Jennifer R. Weis and Hillary J. Haldane, eds. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7z4029vn Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 King, Kathryn A. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5p3048f2 <p>The public rollout of ChatGPT, a free app that produces uncannily refined responses to users’ questions or prompts, initially had many education professionals up in arms due largely to fears over student cheating. Panic levels receded as a new realization surfaced: rather than simply banning the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI or AI) for assignments, we can and should adapt to chatbot-related challenges, reframing them as opportunities. In meeting this new technology with creativity and purpose, we can reorient education’s compass needle back toward process as opposed to product – toward thinking about as opposed to merely recounting what others have said. In other words, higher education must evolve, and the adaptations we create, not ChatGPT, could be the real revolution.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5p3048f2 Tue, 7 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Sobo, Elisa https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7dc9d9qr Review of Anthropological Theory for the Twenty-First Century: A Critical Approach by A. Lynn Bolles, Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz, Bernard C. Perley, and Keri Vacanti Brondo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7dc9d9qr Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Boudreault-Fournier, Alexandrine https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2nq8m00p <p>It is difficult to describe the experience of living through the COVID-19 global pandemic while simultaneously teaching anthropology and sociology courses to undergraduates. My students and I experienced together not just the fear of sickness and death, but also social issues in the U.S. made more visible by the pandemic, such as racial tensions, challenges related to access to health care, and consequences of the social determinants of health. The “normal” that many are hoping we return to was heavily shaped by neoliberal policies that conceptualize health and illness as well as personhood in particular ways, such as through defining social problems as medical in nature and using medicine as a form of social control. The issue for us as educators, however, is that stress, depression, and anxiety are normal reactions to real conditions that we are all experiencing, albeit with strikingly different foundations and resources. In this paper I reflect on my own experiences in the... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2nq8m00p Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Yankovskyy, Shelly https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3qd5c1bv <p>First-generation college students (students whose parents did not complete a bachelor’s degree) are a growing population within U.S. colleges. These students often belong to historically underrepresented populations including racial and ethnic minority groups and those with lower socioeconomic status. This paper discusses a project to redesign introductory anthropology courses to be more “first-generation friendly.” Changes discussed include creating a welcoming classroom climate, providing clear expectations and feedback, integrating Universal Design for Learning, rethinking course content, and creating plans for critical self-reflection. We conclude by discussing the impact of our changes and plans for future work.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3qd5c1bv Tue, 28 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Miller, Jason Klales, Alexandra Maxwell, Ashley https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9zm2x58x Review of Sugar Cane &amp; Rum: The Bittersweet History of Labor &amp; Life on the Yucatán Peninsula, by John R. Gust and Jennifer P. Mathews https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9zm2x58x Wed, 1 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Mulholland, Mary-Lee https://escholarship.org/uc/item/68c1n4tx <p>The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on experiential learning have been felt by students interested in forensic anthropology casework and lab training. Without access to labs and with cancellations of courses related to hands-on learning like human osteology and forensic anthropology, students may not receive critical training necessary in their fields of interest. In this paper, we explore one potential option for engaged forensic anthropology research: the creation of skeletal research surveys that students can design and disseminate to law enforcement to better understand the nature of forensic casework in their own states. Students reported a high satisfaction rate with these survey projects and were able to build networks that helped them refine their post-graduation education and career goals. By formulating questions, creating surveys, submitting to the review board, and synthesizing data, students were able to explore forensic topics without entering a traditional lab... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/68c1n4tx Tue, 31 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Michael, Amy Blatt, Samantha Schofield, Tori Effingham, Joseph https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8rk8k2m6 <p>At the height of the pandemic, schools across the country shut down, shifting classrooms to a remote learning modality. While the use of emergency remote teaching (ERT) provided an alternative for schools, it was a difficult transition. Online learning is often compared with ERT, although the two are different. Where ERT is a quick and temporary resolution, online learning is a long-term investment developed to provide a quality educational experience for students. Both are necessary lifelines to learning, but online education is vital in multiple ways. Rather than a substitute, it is a core fixture on the higher ed landscape, with more and more students, faculty, and administrators recognizing online education's benefits. This essay explores remote and online learning as lifelines in different contexts. It reflects on the impact of online learning from three views: a personal account, growing demands for contingent faculty, and the diverse needs of non-traditional students.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8rk8k2m6 Fri, 1 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Samperio, Tracy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5259j87g Review of Gendered Lives: Global Issues, edited by Nadine T. Fernandez and Katie Nelson https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5259j87g Thu, 31 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Guelke, Karoline https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7j14t00f <p>Science education relies heavily on observable phenomena or imagery, making it by and large inaccessible to blind and low vision (BLV) students. As laboratory science courses are frequently necessary to complete general education requirements in higher education, teaching practices that are not inclusive to BLV students inhibit their retention and scientific literacy. While many disciplines and some anthropological subdisciplines has resources for BLV students, no resources exist for biological anthropology. As introductory courses to biological anthropology fulfill laboratory science requirements at many institutions, it is fundamental that educators consider accommodations for BLV students. This paper describes laboratory activities, adapted for BLV and their sighted peers, satisfying three commonly included conceptual modules (genetics, primatology, and skeletal anatomy) of an introductory biological anthropology course with a lab component. Best practices and student and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7j14t00f Sat, 26 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Blatt, Samantha Heidi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2kw1v755 <p>This essay is a reflective letter from myself, the author, an undergraduate anthropology student at Rollins College in Central Florida, to pioneering anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Arising out of an anthropology course on the U.S. South, I reflect on Hurston’s foundational contributions to the discipline of anthropology, to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, and to my own institution, Rollins College, where Hurston directed and organized stage performances of folklore in the early 1930s. Despite Hurston’s works falling into obscurity towards the end of her life and the decades following, her contributions to Southern literature and anthropology survive to this day, inspiring scholars, Eatonville residents, and students alike to pursue more decolonial methodologies in ethnographic research. I ask Hurston many of my unanswered questions about her life, relationships, fieldwork methods, and messages from her works. I end with a call for anthropology students to continue... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2kw1v755 Mon, 7 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Bengtson, Jacqueline https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1n2344jd <p>Teachers navigate funding cuts, political machination, sexual harassment and assault investigations, racism and White supremacy amid various locally constructed crises. Using bureaucratic violence and institutional betrayal – two interlinked, yet distinct, theoretical frameworks – in this brief commentary I propose that academic working conditions constrain pedagogical choice, with significant implications for teaching and learning.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1n2344jd Fri, 18 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Reinke, Amanda J https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8qn8q4t8 <p>The four fields within American anthropology are periodically under discussion, especially when it comes to applying them in a holistic way. Various roadblocks, both institutional and personal, currently prevent greater development of holistic studies. This paper discusses new ideas for teaching anthropology holistically, based on a four-field model, as well as ways in which departments could be reorganized to foster a four-field approach in students.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8qn8q4t8 Sat, 1 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Forrest-Blincoe, Badger Forrest, John A. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8c412989 <p>Students in higher education are facing challenges with paying for their education. Cost of course materials, primarily textbooks, continues to be a financial concern. As a result, students often delay or simply do not purchase the materials they need to perform well in courses. Openly licensed materials are becoming popular because they are free to the student, accessible from the first day of class, and can be modified by the teacher. In this study, an open textbook was co-created by two anthropology faculty with the support of two instructional designers for an introductory anthropology course at a large university in the United States. A survey was given to 1,402 students to gauge satisfaction with the textbook and elicit feedback, and final grades were compared pre- and post- open textbook implementation. In general, student satisfaction was high and poor grades declined. In conclusion, we propose recommendations for those who are interested in implementing more affordable... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8c412989 Sat, 1 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 deNoyelles, Aimee Callaghan, Michael Williams, Lana Raible, John https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7sv804xj <p>The debate technique has the potential to encourage students to critically think and engage in anthropology courses in higher education. But debates can be challenging, especially when taking place in an online environment. This article presents the implementation of a debate in a high-enrollment, online archaeology course. Mainly, we seek to answer these questions: (1) How did students perceive their critical thinking, engagement, and interaction while participating in the online debate? (2) What was the instructor’s experience related to the quality of student responses as well as the grading time and effort? At the conclusion, we offer recommendations for educators interested in incorporating debates into their own practice.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7sv804xj Sat, 1 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 deNoyelles, Aimee Kovacevich, Brigitte https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76s6m7xm <p>The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced myriad challenges for teaching anthropology and has altered the academic landscape for years to come. However, it has also brought new opportunities for improving coursework with creative digital methods and online resources. Can an entire anthropology course be taught using only freely available web-based materials? If so, what could it look like? I embarked on this digital learning experiment hoping to create open educational resources (OERs) that could be shared and adapted by anthropology instructors. Aimed at introducing students to the fundamentals of cultural anthropology, Ethnographic Insights Across Cultures is an engaging 13-week syllabus supported by carefully curated readings, videos, and activities. I reflect on designing these resources as adaptable tools for online or hybrid learning during the pandemic and share feedback from instructors and students who have used them. Finally, I suggest that flexible approaches to education... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76s6m7xm Sat, 1 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Barone, Francine https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4950h1rb <p>As a central method of ethnographic research, participant observation is often utilized in college-level courses to prompt the development of applied and anthropological thinking. This article examines the possibilities of participant observation as a mode of experiential environmental learning that can encourage reflection upon understandings of urban nature. We draw from the writing of, and interviews with, undergraduate and graduate university students enrolled in an environmental anthropology course to explore these possibilities. Specifically, we ask: How does participant observation serve to engage students in thinking relationally about urban environments? We conclude with pedagogical suggestions.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4950h1rb Sat, 1 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Storey, Angela D. Day, Allan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0547b30v Review of Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), edited by Susan D. Blum https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0547b30v Tue, 14 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Ginsberg, Daniel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/61t3b57k <p>This paper functions as a narrative examining the firsthand account of a family encountering the mother’s diagnosis of ovarian and lung cancer.&nbsp;&nbsp;This experience and its relationship with society is explored through concepts such as the perception of time, family roles, biomedical culture, and conceptions of normality. While explicitly delineating the connections between theoretical lenses like those of Arthur Kleinman and Ruth Benedict to the story at hand, the main purpose of the paper is to highlight the complexity of illness. This is completed by examining only the very first moments of diagnosis and its profound, permanent effects on patients and their loved ones.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/61t3b57k Mon, 9 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Faughnan, Hannah https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3f86x8gt <p>This special issue results from email conversations begun in the summer of 2020 concerning COVID-19’s effects on the teaching and learning of anthropology in higher education. The Society for Applied Anthropology’s Higher Education Thematic Interest Group listserv functioned as a networking tool, bringing together questions, authors, editors, and the journal. The resulting commentaries, project showcases, and research articles published here offer analyses of teaching and learning within the virtual walls of the academy during the pandemic. They reveal much about student and professor experiences with online tools and digital anthropology as well as the preexisting inequalities in higher education uncovered by the pandemic. Collectively, the essays in this issue offer insights and perspectives that can help guide anthropological teaching and learning in the future.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3f86x8gt Fri, 16 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Santos, Jose Leonardo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/91m219sz Review of Qualitative Research Methods (2nd ed.), by Monique Hennink, Inge Hutter, and Ajay Bailey https://escholarship.org/uc/item/91m219sz Thu, 24 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Bruna, Sean Patrick https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2942g1g6 <p>In early March 2020, Teaching and Learning Anthropology (TLA) initiated a crowdsourced document entitled “Teaching COVID-19: An Anthropology Syllabus Project.” This essay reflects on TLA’s #COVIDSyllabus in the context of a broader shift toward the use of crowdsourced hashtag syllabi – or #syllabi – in social justice movements. I argue that the #COVIDSyllabus holds important lessons for anthropological teaching and learning. As a collaborative, open-access pedagogical project, the syllabus points to new possibilities for 1) expanding public anthropological engagement with contemporary social issues; 2) democratizing knowledge practices and centering the contributions of often marginalized scholars and activists; and 3) building shared communities of praxis within the discipline and among scholar-activists. The full syllabus can be downloaded from this essay’s supplemental materials; the live document is available at <a href="https://bit.ly/TeachCOVID19">https://bit.ly/TeachCOVID19</... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2942g1g6 Wed, 16 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Jenks, Angela C. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/36t966sq <p>This essay describes a film that was produced for a community-engaged research project in a Spring 2020 Medical Anthropology course. The authors collaborated with the Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide (SPTS) to make a video on how to practice mental well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. The film can be viewed at <a href="https://commons.princeton.edu/ant240-s20/program-for-community-engaged-scholarship-proces-projects/educating-teens-to-prevent-suicide/">https://commons.princeton.edu/ant240-s20/program-for-community-engaged-scholarship-proces-projects/educating-teens-to-prevent-suicide/</a>.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/36t966sq Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Kim, Jamie Peifer, Sophia Chen, Olivia Haas, Amital https://escholarship.org/uc/item/14f8d2sn Review of Explorations: An Open Invitation to Biological Anthropology, edited by Beth Shook, Katie Nelson, Kelsie Aguilera, and Lara Braff https://escholarship.org/uc/item/14f8d2sn Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Gibbons, Kevin S. Cossin, Zev https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4x12293z <p>This paper addresses two challenges in higher education that increased with the shift to online learning due to COVID-19: translating experiential learning online and supporting student engagement. While virtual reality can be mobilized to address both of these challenges, finding or creating virtual reality that fits a course’s learning objective is a common barrier. This paper illustrates how instructors can integrate anthropological readings with freely available 360° videos or Google Earth to create their own virtual reality-like experiences and class activities. Such immersive experiences can support students in applying anthropology to real-world issues from any location with a smart device and internet connection and lead to a more holistic understanding of social issues. They also present an alternative to narrated PowerPoints or videos in online and in-person learning that can foster student engagement with the content.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4x12293z Tue, 30 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Ricke, Audrey https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0nk9p37w <p>Although the COVID-19 pandemic created challenges for faculty and students alike, it was also a catalyst for new collaborations. Our faculty-student project capitalized on what the pandemic publicly exposed: the fact that human health and culture are inextricably intertwined. We write this commentary as an anthropology professor and student who developed a Directed Independent Study focused on salient social and biological phenomena of 2020 while also adapting pedagogical and methodological approaches given the circumstantial constraints. By applying an anthropological lens to current events of 2020, we operationalized anthropological theories – like structural violence and embodiment – that are typically distant abstractions to students.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0nk9p37w Wed, 17 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Pfister, Anne E Encinosa, Maria https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0kw2m121 <p>The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted teaching over the past year, pushing many instructors and students into remote learning. These changes have forced new discussions about serious issues with the digital divide and an array of intersectional inequities, and they have prompted conversations about the physical and mental health of everyone involved. While initial transitions to remote learning were treated as distinct from previous in-person or online learning, increasingly we are seeing a push to “return to normal.” This essay argues that pandemic recoveries take many forms, and risk and uncertainty must continue to shape our teaching. We must continue to engage with critical issues related to inequity, intersectionality, and broad discussions of health if we are to ensure a safe return.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0kw2m121 Thu, 25 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Trivedi, Jennifer https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6tj2f948 <p>This essay introduces a film that was produced for a course project during the Spring 2020 semester. The film, entitled “Captivity,” presents music students’ perspectives and experiences early in the pandemic. It points to the important role that the arts play in people’s lives as they navigate frightening and uncertain situations. The film can be viewed at <a href="https://blount.as.ua.edu/captivity/">https://blount.as.ua.edu/captivity/</a>.<em> </em></p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6tj2f948 Sun, 14 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Phelps, Maria Jo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80f2066v <p>This article considers what UK-based higher education researchers Jan Meyer and Ray Land describe as “threshold concepts,” asking how these concepts might apply to the field of social/cultural anthropology. This is explored in relation to the practical pedagogical project of constructing a curated online resource kit to support students who are “bridging” into social anthropology from other disciplines. In this article, we review the literature on threshold concepts in social anthropology as well as some adjacent writings on “key,” “core,” or “signature” anthropological concepts. The potential value of boundary work and troubled/troubling knowledge as a generative space emerge as useful points of consideration. We then present findings from our own surveys and focus groups with University of Otago students, summarizing their emphasis on “felt” and applied levels of understandings, the significance of ethnography, and a “hidden curriculum” of values. We explain how the lens... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80f2066v Thu, 4 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Wardell, Susan Robinson, Ella https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3gj8s1f6 <p>In Spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced university instructors across the United States to confront the daunting task of quickly changing their courses from face-to-face to remote instruction. Nationally, universities relied on virtual platforms as they adjusted educational spaces in response to the pandemic. While there have been many anecdotes of how individual faculty responded to this transition, social scientists have yet to study systematically how instructors handled this transition. This article presents and analyzes data from semi-structured interviews with non-tenure-track social science faculty to understand how they handled the change to remote teaching after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It analyzes these interviews by drawing on intersecting perspectives from the anthropology of disaster, anthropology of education, and digital anthropology. We argue the transition to online teaching presented new challenges and opportunities to instructors as people... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3gj8s1f6 Sun, 31 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Jayaram, Kiran Pajunen, Matthew Garcia, Chad Nuñez, Neudy Carolina Smith, Jae-Anne https://escholarship.org/uc/item/16m6p693 <p>This commentary serves as a reflection on the impact of COVID-19 and other current events that have coincided with the pandemic from my perspective as an anthropologist and faculty administrator. With consideration of the multiple levels of decision-making involved in the pandemic response, the pedagogical implications of this current moment, and the significance of care within our academic spaces, I point to the use of anthropological approaches for sustaining the resilience of institutions of higher education despite our recent challenges.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/16m6p693 Sun, 31 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Johnson, Lauren C. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/57f7c013 <p>This article presents a detailed description of how I adapted an undergraduate ethnographic research methods course to a fully online format during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on my recent experience designing and teaching a new course titled Ethnographic Research in/of Houston Asia in Fall 2020 at Rice University, I illustrate the virtual learning environment I maintained in this course through ongoing collaboration with members of the Zoroastrian, Sikh, and Chinese Buddhist communities in Houston, Texas. Specifically, this article describes how I incorporated virtual field trips and a web symposium – two activities that I organized with the support of Rice University’s Course Development Grant – into my teaching of ethnography on Zoom. Such online activities, which are by necessity intensively interactive and community-oriented, enabled the course to cultivate a deep level of public engagement that arguably would not have been possible in the pre-COVID-19 period.</p><p>&nbsp;</... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/57f7c013 Sat, 23 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Cheuk, Ka-Kin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/25h526rx <p>Reflecting on our recent experience of online teaching with mainly historically marginalized students at the U.S.-Mexico border, we emphasize the importance of engaging a critical pedagogy of place by creating communities of trust. We describe how the COVID-19 pandemic was experienced among us and our students, focusing on how it impacted practical aspects and the context of our teaching. We discuss four teaching strategies we implemented during the pandemic that highlight the importance of communication and flexibility in allowing students to self-pace their learning. These strategies proved useful as we began to reach a level of trust among students and gained knowledge of their needs. We conclude by describing the pandemic as a period of opportunities in which anthropology students can apply concepts from assigned readings to confront and analyze a historical moment that neither we, nor our students, had previously experienced.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/25h526rx Thu, 21 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Mandache, Luminiţa-Anda Browning, Anne Bletzer, Keith https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0mb679f5 <p>By the end of summer 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had upended higher education by requiring immediate adaptation by students, teachers, and institutions to new sets of limitations. What did this period of crisis mean for current and future teaching and learning? A rapid qualitative assessment presented here seeks to begin a sustained conversation around instructors’ experiences. The anthropology professors interviewed in this study found that preexisting conditions in higher education resulted in pedagogical impacts that aggravated both student and faculty inequalities within their institutions. Far from being a new “crisis,” the difficulties encountered in teaching and learning were familiar to professors, who worried ongoing problems in higher education were intrinsic.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0mb679f5 Sun, 3 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Santos, Jose Leonardo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/67f4p38m <p>Collectively, how can we work towards reducing human impacts on the environment to lessen the process of climate change and develop plans for climate change mitigation and adaptation? Current trends such as extreme climatic events and climate stress, food insecurity, declining natural resources, and inequitable access to food, health care, and education make it clear this is a time to act.&nbsp; After teaching at a university for a few decades, I find students are overwhelmed with the increasing amount of negativity in their local and global worlds. By introducing the concept of degrowth into several classes, I found ways to empower students to use their own data collection to inform themselves of what they could do differently to lessen their impact on the environment. Degrowth is defined as a philosophy of life or a lifestyle that calls for a conscious effort to reduce, reuse, recycle, and repurpose. Degrowth is also a political and social movement based on ecological economics... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/67f4p38m Fri, 1 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Andreatta, Susan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6777p5zh <p>This paper describes a course on Anthropology and Museums offered at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. The interface between anthropology and museums is of great relevance for the elaboration of an effective pedagogical strategy in teaching anthropology. The course described here included both theoretical and practical activities aimed at covering contemporary debates about anthropology, museums, and material culture as well as at offering direct first-hand experiences for students. The development and results of the course highlight the usefulness of adopting this theoretical-practical mixture for the effective engagement of students in the educational process.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6777p5zh Fri, 1 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Bollettin, Paride Tromboni, Marco https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0hc4401x <p>As COVID-19 swept across the United States in March 2020, it crippled the economy and exposed social vulnerabilities. With the closure of residential campuses and the pivot to remote learning, university administrators and faculty feared negative repercussions for both budgets and student success. In this article, we document the impact of the pandemic through a discussion of how two anthropology courses, at two very different universities, were adapted to remote learning. Our “accidental successes” suggest that a student-centered approach with flexibility and creativity in course design, as well as considering the socioeconomic realities of our students, could benefit all courses.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0hc4401x Fri, 1 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Copeland, Toni Wightman, Abigail https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6vr061s4 This is a book review of Max Geenberg's book, which focuses on at-risk youth in violence prevention programs. The review offers an overview of the ethnographic book, which provides critical insight of youth youth programs, but also about the relationship between young people and the state. Additionally, the review discusses multiple ways in which Greenberg's work can be pedagogically usedful for college level education and antrhopology courses. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6vr061s4 Fri, 27 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Macias, Eric https://escholarship.org/uc/item/476025x1 Review of Of Love and Papers: How Immigration Policy Affects Romance and Family https://escholarship.org/uc/item/476025x1 Wed, 7 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Worthen, Cecil https://escholarship.org/uc/item/87r9h40c <p>Funded by a Teaching Innovation Grant designed to transform traditional in-person courses into engaging and equitable online spaces, we designed the introductory anthropology course, <em>Plagues, Pathogens, and Public Policy</em>. The course is 15 weeks and is organized thematically around pressing topics and conversations concerning the social, political, and cultural dimensions of pandemics. While the COVID-19 global pandemic has intensified the pertinence of the course’s content, recent discourse on systemic racism and police brutality in the United States has also drawn renewed attention to the lack of inclusivity and accessibility within anthropological academia. Thus, with the design of this syllabus, we sought to decolonize our course content and pedagogy as a means of contributing to ongoing efforts towards inclusivity in academia. Our approach to a decolonized and inclusive syllabus included diversifying course content as well as constructing accessible language, assignments,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/87r9h40c Fri, 28 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Primiano, Samantha J Krishnan, Ananya Sangaramoorthy, Thurka https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8x98f8vf Introduction to a special issue on teaching migration. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8x98f8vf Wed, 15 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Jenks, Angela C. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9zv8p8zq Frontera Sur / Border South https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9zv8p8zq Wed, 10 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Gauthier, Melissa https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8tn3z5nd Border South / Frontera Sur https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8tn3z5nd Tue, 9 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Gauthier, Melissa https://escholarship.org/uc/item/44n939r2 <p>The American Anthropological Association’s forthcoming traveling exhibit on the subject of migration and mobility is designed to be hosted by public libraries. By recruiting libraries as host institutions, we make scholarship accessible to general audiences and provide a focal point for programming and community engagement. This essay outlines our approach to designing with libraries in mind, aiming to influence public discourse about a topical issue.</p><p> </p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/44n939r2 Tue, 25 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Ginsberg, Daniel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/06q2b2qh <p>Teaching about undocumented Mexican migration means teaching about an issue often seen as controversial. In many contexts, assumptions students bring with them can inhibit their ability to engage with nuance to more effectively understand the issue. It is therefore imperative that instructors deliver this information in a way that allows students to see such nuance. This article details an essay assignment I use to teach about undocumented Mexican migration in the context of the political and economic frameworks that help drive it. A key feature of this assignment is its use of “decoupling,” or separating the issue at hand from ideologies and associations surrounding it in order to facilitate understanding. Use of this strategy helps students understand this complex issue in a way, it is hoped, they can apply to complex issues beyond.</p><p> </p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/06q2b2qh Tue, 25 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Rodkey, Evin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/58403197 <p>Introducing multimedia learning in the classroom has numerous benefits for students, including a higher level of engagement for an array of learning styles, development of transferrable skills, and encouraging creativity. In this commentary, I introduce two multimedia assignments, an infographic and a podcast/video, that I have successfully implemented in my courses. I outline the rationale, goals, guidelines, resources, assessment rubrics, potential modifications, student reactions, and examples of student work for each assignment with the hope that more educators will be able to integrate similar forms of deeper learning.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/58403197 Mon, 24 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Ocobock, Cara https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8999f57n <p>This commentary introduces the U.S. State Department-sponsored Diplomacy Lab. This program provides interdisciplinary teams of students an opportunity to learn how to directly inform government policy development and implementation. In the project discussed here, a team of student researchers considered how the new public charge final rule could impact Cabo Verdean immigrants in the United States. The program demonstrates how project- and human-centered pedagogy through social science research advances student learning by providing students an opportunity to directly observe the complex effects of policy decisions on people’s lives.</p><p> </p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8999f57n Sat, 15 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Lundy, Brandon D Garefino, Allison C. Cleaver, Brenda L Dumett, Danielle Godwin, Kaitlyn Haile, Agazeet Hasse, William P Seigler, Alexandria Smith, Kathleen B Zingleman, Nicholas A https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1cp107j8 The Journey for the American Dream https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1cp107j8 Sat, 15 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Mora, Idalia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0c60j8hc <p>A key element in teaching the anthropology of im/migration is fostering critical analysis of the discursive frames used in conversations about im/migrants. In this article I describe an in-class activity I use to foster critical thinking about discursive frames on im/migration—specifically those which are embedded into U.S. immigration law. Students are asked to play the role of an immigration judge deciding on a de-identified version of an actual “hardship waiver” case—a petition for relief from deportation. By putting themselves in the shoes of an immigration judge, students must work to disconnect from their own biases and assumptions in order to attempt to apply immigration law. In the process, students learn about the inner workings of the immigration system and interrogate how discursive frames shape the application of immigration law.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0c60j8hc Sat, 15 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Cook, Jennifer https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9wn8w98p <p>This article argues for the use of community-engaged learning to teach about migration in anthropology. Using community-engaged learning centers justice-based praxis and builds solidarity by working to dismantle the unjust structures creating migration crises and inhumane conditions for migrants. We analyze our partnership between an anthropologist, a leader of a non-profit organization providing affordable legal services to local migrants, and a collaborating student as a case study. The design of our partnership, the construction of the migration seminars Bennett teaches, and an emphasis on justice-oriented outcomes for both the students and the community center our anti-racist, anti-classist approach to building solidary. We argue that community-engaged learning address anthropology’s (re)current crises around our colonial legacies not only epistemologically and methodologically but also pedagogically.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9wn8w98p Fri, 14 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Bennett, Joyce Doyle, Mike Giacalone, Margaret https://escholarship.org/uc/item/39n937nt <p>The Im/migrant Ethnographic Portrait Project was designed for introductory cultural anthropology courses and has a threefold aim: 1) to familiarize students with research methods, 2) to facilitate students’ deeper understanding of migration by connecting course readings with a hands-on project, and 3) to humanize im/migrants by bringing students into one-on-one conversations where they will hear a person’s story in their own words. To support students’ success with this semester-long project and to ensure (as far as is possible) that no harm is done, we provide instruction and feedback through a series of progressive assignments. In this essay we explain each of these steps before concluding with remarks about the challenges and benefits of teaching this project.</p><p> </p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/39n937nt Fri, 14 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Guzmán, Jennifer R Medeiros, Melanie A Faulkner, Gwendolyn https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0bv3d6c5 <p>This commentary shares an assignment on family migration stories from an upper-division undergraduate course on global migration. The assignment, which asks students to interview each other about their family migration histories and then analyze their partner’s story, requires students to apply course readings to the real-world context of their peers’ experiences. The commentary provides an overview of the assignment and challenges students encountered. I also highlight the lessons learned, both in terms of course content and classroom community. The large public teaching university where I work is a Hispanic-serving institution and is home to around 1,000 undocumented students. Many more students are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Bringing in students’ personal experiences with migration serves to build academic confidence and classroom community among these mostly first-generation students while building connections among students and setting the tone for the course... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0bv3d6c5 Fri, 7 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Fouratt, Caitlin E https://escholarship.org/uc/item/46m5d313 Review of Field Notes: A Guided Journal for Doing Anthropology https://escholarship.org/uc/item/46m5d313 Tue, 4 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 de Kramer, Neri https://escholarship.org/uc/item/50p355fk Common terms used by students to describe a good professor, especially on websites like ratemyprofessor.com, a website that allows students to rate their professors, include “understanding,” “nice,” “engaging,” “lenient” and “kind,” all of which are indicators of a popular attitude known as student consumerism. As a consequence, some may say that student’s perspectives concerning the qualities that make up a good professor are to be taken with a grain of salt. However, evidence from surveyed students and professors shows that the majority of both community college students and professors agree that the most important qualities of a good professor are “caring” or “understanding,” “engaging” and “knowledgeable” about the source material. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/50p355fk Tue, 21 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Ashworth, Nicholas Hunter https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8t33s63b <p>Anthropology classrooms challenge instructors to critically engage students in theories of the field and how these are visible in everyday life. At the same time, the rise of online education has made new technologies and tools available that allow for the design of innovative pedagogical strategies. This article considers the use of photovoice, a feminist ethnographic research method, as a classroom strategy in an online discussion in an introductory linguistic anthropology course that was taught in a variety of modalities. We explore the students’ products, photographs representing the course concept of performativity, as well as accompanying discussion posts, in order to gauge the effectiveness of the activity. Specifically, we analyze students’ photos and related discussion posts to answer the following question: In what ways did photovoice as a pedagogical strategy illuminate students’ knowledge about the concept of performativity? We discuss how photovoice provides a... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8t33s63b Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Reyes-Foster, Beatriz DeNoyelles, Aimee https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76x4d7jv <p>In this article we argue for a slow, methodical, and collaborative approach to difficult texts. This article is the story of how, thanks to the efforts of the students and professor, a book that rewards diligent effort, and some creative pedagogical strategies borne of desperation, the experience of reading Alex E. Chávez’s Sounds of Crossing became a highlight of our college experience. In this article we explore the differing perspectives of students and faculty, including the reasons students came to view this as a meaningful experience. Some of our significant findings include the following: 1) the reading of the book was meaningful even though it was difficult; 2) the meaningfulness of the reading was not diminished by how difficult the theoretical and musical material remained, even with close exegesis; 3) the difficulty was eased by specific pedagogical methods, mainly based on collaborative learning, that were found by the students to be effective for increasing comprehension... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76x4d7jv Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Gálvez, Alyshia Bravo, Lizbeth Carrasco, Edith Chuber, Kathryn Flores, Daisy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/39g0s34p Review of The Capitalist University: The Transformations of Higher Education in the United States Since 1945 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/39g0s34p Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Diefenderfer, Alison https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7bd848hh <p>This article calls for revisiting how we teach anthropology in light of three mutually reinforcing “moments” – the #MeToo Movement, the development of the American Anthropological Association’s first Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Policy, and shifting student expectations regarding personal safety and wellbeing. By thinking anthropologically about anthropology, against a backdrop of larger questions for the discipline as a whole, we single out the consequences of the “lone anthropologist” trope as it reproduces idealized notions of fieldwork in ways that limit access to the discipline. We suggest ten practical strategies for changing normative pedagogies as a way to increase benefits and reduce harms as we work to minimize risk for sexual violence while preserving the benefits of immersive fieldwork. We conclude by exploring how the classroom itself is feeding back into transforming cultures and institutional structures.</p><p> </p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7bd848hh Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Torres, M. Gabriela Shandy, Dianna https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0jb3c97z <p>Interviewing assignments are frequent components of cultural anthropology courses. In this exercise, students focus on the content of person-centered ethnographic interviews by providing the material themselves. Students write autobiographical narratives that are shared anonymously with the class. This allows them to explore the strengths and limitations of using personal narratives as data, while also considering the role of audience and the challenge of making respondents anonymous. The exercise’s greatest impact, however, comes from giving students firsthand experience with the power of listening to people’s stories, and the assignment has proven remarkably successful at building empathy among a diverse peer group.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0jb3c97z Mon, 9 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Shemer, Noga https://escholarship.org/uc/item/24k0229q Review of Decolonizing the University, edited by Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial, and Kerem Nişancıoğlu https://escholarship.org/uc/item/24k0229q Tue, 18 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Delisle, Takami S https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1tn306hv <p>High impact learning experiences are associated with positive trends in student retention and graduation. I developed a course, Historic Mortuary Archaeology, that incorporates two high impact strategies: engaging undergraduate students in research and learning through collaboration. This article discusses the process through which the course arose, how the work for one large research project was spread among the students, and the changes that I could make to improve the course in the future. The piece concludes with a general discussion of the logistical challenges of off-campus learning experiences and some strategies to address these issues.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1tn306hv Mon, 8 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000 King, Kathryn A. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8nd6j930 Review of Essentials of Linguistics https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8nd6j930 Thu, 24 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Spier, Troy E https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9fb5n1mk Review of Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9fb5n1mk Tue, 1 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Grant, Sarah G https://escholarship.org/uc/item/99m3w2r1 <p>Research has shown that negative effects of stress on undergraduate students can have a significant impact on their college experience. Most of what we know about this topic is quantitative, based on surveys that provide self-reported information for large numbers of college students. The present study provides an in-depth qualitative perspective on college students and stress that foregrounds the voices of these emerging adults. Specifically, in this article we (a) share findings from a study using qualitative methods to examine how college students experience and manage stress and (b) provide strategies to help anthropology instructors design and manage their classes to improve learning for students under chronic stress.<em> </em></p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/99m3w2r1 Tue, 1 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Morey, Taylor Taylor, Nicole https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8rd532dt <p>In light of the fact that nontraditional students (those age 25 years or older) outnumber traditional students on many US college campuses, it is important to understand their needs and experiences in higher education. A key characteristic distinguishing nontraditional students from traditional-aged college students is the high likelihood that they are juggling multiple competing demands and stressors, including parenthood, work, marriage, and financial responsibility. The findings presented here are part of a larger study that included in-depth interviews with 25 nontraditional undergraduate students at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU or Highlands). This article highlights the narratives of five of these nontraditional students to illustrate the range of experiences that emerged across the sample. The authors reflect on how learning these narratives has influenced their personal approaches to teaching and engaging with nontraditional students and provide strategies for... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8rd532dt Tue, 1 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Tamir, Orit Taylor, Nicole https://escholarship.org/uc/item/77f8x8fr <p>As American universities become more diverse, it is necessary to consider if existing pedagogies remain relevant and meaningful for all students. This paper examines service-learning, a community engagement pedagogy originally developed for white, middle-class students, by exploring the experiences of residential undergraduate students of color attending a small liberal arts college in rural Virginia. Rather than rejecting service-learning, I suggest reimagining some service-learning practices – particularly the definition of service, the values of reciprocity and collaboration, and preparation for service – in order to meet the needs and experiences of an increasingly diverse population of college students.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/77f8x8fr Tue, 1 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Wightman, Abigail https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3097j0zc <p>Elements of the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP), or teaching and learning in the Jesuit tradition, can be successfully integrated into both formal anthropology courses and informal environments such as museum exhibits to advance anthropological pedagogy. This article discusses how I integrated the IPP into the design of an anthropology course on museum exhibit development and into the exhibit itself. Students benefitted from direct activities such as opportunities to study and interpret material culture, and they were asked to reflect on the experience of applying their anthropological knowledge and interests in a public venue. Visitors to the exhibit were provided opportunities for reflection, which may lead to changes in their actions.</p><p> </p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3097j0zc Tue, 1 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Nichols, Catherine A https://escholarship.org/uc/item/28g2k3qg This paper explains how to play and debrief the Exchange Game. Suitable for play in first year anthropology courses and in lectures on economic anthropology, the game reinforces core concepts including reciprocity, cooperation, and altruism. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/28g2k3qg Tue, 1 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000 McIlwraith, Thomas https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11x575xb <p>The articles in this special collection were presented at the Society for Applied Anthropology meeting in 2018 on a panel affiliated with the organization’s Issues in Higher Education Topical Interest Group. This topical interest group focuses on examining how ongoing shifts in student demographics, financial challenges, and national policy impact decision-making and practice at all levels of the institution in complex ways. The articles in this collection explore educational experiences and needs of college students from their perspectives within the broader context of a rapidly changing higher education landscape and with a focus on applying this knowledge to teaching practices in the anthropology classroom. The authors present ethnographic research on students’ experiences, discuss implications of findings for the anthropology classroom, and provide concrete strategies that instructors can implement to address students’ needs. In doing so, they bring together two fields... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11x575xb Tue, 1 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Taylor, Nicole Tamir, Orit https://escholarship.org/uc/item/26n825nj Who is Juan? https://escholarship.org/uc/item/26n825nj Thu, 15 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Huffman, Arthur Guaman, Juan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6kj0x30n Doing and Teaching Anthropology: An Interview with David McCurdy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6kj0x30n Sun, 4 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 McCurdy, David Nelson, Katie https://escholarship.org/uc/item/71k249rn <p>One of the key challenges for undergraduate students is learning to read, understand, and synthesize academic literature. To help students develop these skills, a research grid assignment using Microsoft Excel was developed. This assignment breaks down the key steps to data synthesis, including identifying and summarizing key parts of academic literature and comparing these parts across academic articles. The ability to sort and highlight data in Excel allows students to easily identify patterns in the literature related to their specific research topics. Student feedback following two semesters of use in a core physical anthropology course suggests that the process of creating and using the research grid improved student satisfaction with the research process.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/71k249rn Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Shook, Beth https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sx9h66z <p>In the Appalachian mountains, residents experience disproportionately high rates of poverty, exorbitant rates of incarceration, above-average mortality rates across the lifespan, and epidemically low educational attainment rates. The complexities of this region prompt consideration of the possibilities for an anthropology-inspired, liberation-focused pedagogy to redress structural inequalities. Experiential pedagogical approaches to learning mobilize students and communities toward common goals, though barriers exist to implementing these methods, including resource constraints and concerns about effectiveness. Amidst internal and external pressures on the teaching and learning of anthropology at the postsecondary level, this paper explores a case study in which students in a medical anthropology service-learning course partnered with the community to understand two broad areas: 1) perceptions of risk and control related to environmental hazards, and 2) motivation for participating... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sx9h66z Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Wies, Jennifer https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qm7n9fb Combating fake news and fradualent science can be incredibly taxing. In this paper, I reflect on teaching introduction to biological anthropology at a large university and incorporating old academic literature as a teaching document. By utilizing old biological anthropology literautre and encouraing students to post related articles allowed for class discussion to critically analyze the material. By fostering a dialogue between the student and the professor in this setting, it brought upon a more nuanced and meaningful way to tackle fake news in the era of fake news. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qm7n9fb Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Schaefer, Benjamin J https://escholarship.org/uc/item/41c7q5ng <p>Curriculum development in biological anthropology requires instructors to generate learning outcomes for both anthropology and biology majors. However, these students have substantially different backgrounds. Anthropology curricula do not always require biology prerequisites, and many instructors are concerned that anthropology majors may not be as prepared to learn biology content. As bioanthropological research increasingly relies on genetics and phylogenomics, a strong emphasis needs to be put on integrating biological content into anthropology courses. The core-level “Human Evolution” course at Virginia Commonwealth University is taught under an anthropology rubric. The course is divided into four primary units: two units cover topics that are also explored in lower-level biology courses (e.g., DNA inheritance) and two units focus on paleoanthropological topics (e.g., hominin taxonomy). Here, we compare results of course assessments between anthropology and biology majors... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/41c7q5ng Fri, 8 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Rector, Amy L Day, Lisa M O'Neill, Kelsey D Vergamini, Marie Volkers, Lauren Hernandez, Diego Verrelli, Brian C