Visual and Sensory Anthropology
Overview
Theoretical Foundations of Visual and Sensory Anthropology
This includes all or some of:
Semiotics and the meaning of images
Interpretation and Context
Power and the Gaze
Realism, Objectivity and Photography
The Political Economy of Image Production, Reproduction and Circulation
The Embodied Self and Sensory Anthropology
Methods and Ethics in Visual and Sensory Anthropology
This includes all or some of:
Methods and Ethics of Collaborative Practice
Methods and Ethics of Cultural Display in Museums
Profiles of Artistic and Imaginative Ethnographies
Anthropology and Digital Media
This course will employ a number of instructional methods to accomplish its objectives, including some or all of the following:
- Lecture
- Audio-visual presentations
- Small group discussion
- Seminar presentations
- Classroom discussion
- Guest lectures
Evaluation will be carried out in accordance with Douglas College Evaluation Policy and will include both formative and summative components.
Instructors may use a student’s record of attendance and/or level of active participation in the course as part of the student’s graded performance. Where this occurs, expectations and grade calculations regarding class attendance and participation will be clearly defined in the Instructor Course Outline.
Evaluation will be based on some or all of the following assignment and project types.
Class Participation and/or Presentations 10%
Exams and Quizzes 30%
Group Workshops including class discussion and presentations 10%
A Research Portfolio integrating creative art, research skills, and academic analysis 30%
Term Paper, Essay or Written Assignment 20%
Total 100%
Students may conduct research with human participants as part of their coursework in this class. Instructors for the course are responsible for ensuring that student research projects comply with college policies on ethical conduct for research involving human subjects.
Upon completion of the course, the successful student should be able to:
- Identify and critically examine ethical and methodological issues entailed in audio-visual anthropological research and representations.
- Compare textual and audio-visual representations, both realist and experimental, of the same or similar cultural phenomena.
- Examine film, video and photography as technologies that both enable cultural representations and reflect the cultural and historical contexts of their production.
- Discuss anthropological theories of representation, identity, production, collaboration, distribution, consumption, power, and post-coloniality through examination of visual media.
- Trace the history of visual bias in western culture and disruptions of visual bias enabled by sensory anthropology theory and practice.
- Historicize and critique some stylistic conventions of documentary and ethnographic films and/or gallery and museum installations.
A list of required and recommended textbooks and materials is provided on the Instructor's Course Outline, which is available to students at the beginning of each semester.
Possible texts include:
Elliott, Denielle and Culhane, Dara eds. 2016. A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies. University of Toronto Press.
MacDougall, David. 2005. The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses. Princeton University Press.
Pandian, Anand. 2015. Reel World: An Anthropology of Creation.Duke University Press.
Sturken, Marita and Cartwright, Lisa. 2018. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. Third Edition. Oxford University Press.
Pandian, Anand. 2015. Reel World: An Anthropology of Creation.Duke University Press.
Requisites
Prerequisites
One of ANTH 1100, 1111, 1112, or permission of the instructor.
Corequisites
No corequisite courses.
Equivalencies
No equivalent courses.
Course Guidelines
Course Guidelines for previous years are viewable by selecting the version desired. If you took this course and do not see a listing for the starting semester / year of the course, consider the previous version as the applicable version.
Course Transfers
These are for current course guidelines only. For a full list of archived courses please see https://www.bctransferguide.ca
| Institution | Transfer details for ANTH 2020 |
|---|---|
| Alexander College (ALEX) | ALEX ANTH 2XX (3) |
| Athabasca University (AU) | AU ANTH 3XX (3) |
| Camosun College (CAMO) | CAMO ANTH 2XX (3) |
| College of New Caledonia (CNC) | CNC ANTH 2XX (3) |
| College of the Rockies (COTR) | COTR ANTH 2XX (3) |
| Coquitlam College (COQU) | COQU ANTH 2XX (3) |
| Emily Carr University of Art & Design (EC) | EC SOCS 200 lev (3) |
| Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) | KPU ANTH 2XXX (3) |
| Langara College (LANG) | LANG ANTH 2XXX (3) |
| LaSalle College Vancouver (LCV) | LCV ART 2XX (3) |
| Northern Lights College (NLC) | NLC ANTH 2XX (2) |
| Okanagan College (OC) | OC ANTH 2XX (3) |
| Quest University (QU) | QU TRN 1XXX (3) |
| Simon Fraser University (SFU) | SFU SA 245 (3) |
| Trinity Western University (TWU) | TWU ANTH 2XX (3) |
| University Canada West (UCW) | UCW ANTH 2XX (3) |
| University of British Columbia - Okanagan (UBCO) | UBCO ANTH_O 2nd (3) |
| University of British Columbia - Vancouver (UBCV) | UBCV ANTH_V 2nd (3) |
| University of Northern BC (UNBC) | UNBC ANTH 2XX (3) |
| University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) | UFV ANTH 2XX (3) |
| University of Victoria (UVIC) | UVIC ANTH 210 (1.5) |
| Vancouver Island University (VIU) | VIU ANTH 2nd (3) |