Course Description
This course surveys artistic and audio-visual research methods and knowledge sharing practices in anthropology. The production, circulation, and reception of cultural representations are examined with reference to photography, ethnographic films, gallery installations and museum exhibitions. Methodological and ethical issues entailed in creating representations will be explored.
Course Content
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
Learning Activities
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
Means of Assessment
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.
Learning Outcomes
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.
Textbook Materials
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.