Creating Commodities
While doing a sequence of readings on capitalism and its discontents, this assignments tasks students with considering how things became commodities (like water, land, animals’ bodies, etc). To familiarize students […]
Read moreCategory: Anthropology
Make the Familiar Strange
Students write a 1-page description of a common human practice as if they have never seen or heard of it before. Students are told to pretend they are an alien […]
Read moreEthnography of a Medical Controversy
In this fieldwork assignment, students locate a recent topic related to health and use the frameworks of medical anthropology to “read like an anthropologist”. The paper requires students to cite […]
Read moreIllness Narrative
Students conduct an ethnographic interview with someone they know who has experienced “illness” in their life. The illness narratives are used to support student learning about the methods of ethnography. […]
Read moreDocumentary Analysis
Students select a documentary, television episode, or audiovisual resource that was covered in class and write a response paper connecting the multimedia resource to three of concepts/topics discussed in class. […]
Read moreEthnographic Journal
Students are asked to keep an ethnographic journal throughout the semester to observe and analyze an aspect of society or culture. Each journal will be written in response to a […]
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