Dr Veronique Benei, K100 and and Dr Amit Desai, A608

This course is compulsory for BA/BSc Social Anthropology. It is available to students from other degrees as permitted by the regulations and as an outside option.

This course aims to provide training in the reading and interpretation of visual and textual anthropology for first-year students, and to develop analytic skills. The course introduces students to detailed, holistic study of a culture in its context, and develops skills in bringing together the various elements of cultural and social life analysed by anthropologists. By the end of each term, successful students will have both a detailed knowledge of three important texts, and also have a rounded view of the three cultures studied. They will also have developed the capacity to think critically about ethnographic writing and film-making. Great emphasis will be placed in this course on student presentation and participation. In addition, the course aims to enable students to examine in detail the process by which ethnographic texts are produced. The course brings students to a closer understanding of anthropological fieldwork. In gaining a thorough understanding of ethnographic methodology students will develop a sophisticated critical response to the texts they read.

Students will usually read three book-length ethnographic accounts of other cultures (or the equivalent) per term, and will study a film (or pictorial, architectural or other visual material) associated with each text. Teaching will normally be arranged in cycles of three weeks; in the first two hour session, students will be given a background lecture, with a one-hour class. In the second week, they will study a relevant ethnographic, documentary or fiction film (eg a significant film from the country under study), followed by a class. In the third week, they will have a two-hour seminar which brings together an overview of the significance of the text studied and its relationship to the visual material with which it is paired. There may be a final integrative session in the final week of each term.

MT and LT. Three lectures per term plus an introductory lecture; three films/visual material presentations per term/six discussion classes per term/three two-hour seminars per term.  This course will make consistent use of electronic resources, especially the 'public forum' posted on Moodle.  Students are encouraged to avail themselves of this opportunity to constructively interact with the class and the class teachers.

Students will be required to read the three set texts per term, approximately 1/3 text (two-four chapters) each week, and it will be essential to do this in order to pass this course. Students will be asked to give informal and formal presentations in the classes and seminars, and to present an assessment essay after each term's work. Emphasis will be on developing students’ abilities to read and analyse texts as a whole, and to relate them to the other material offered on the course. Supplementary readings may be provided during the term.

Anthropology students taking this course will have an opportunity to submit a tutorial essay for this course to their personal tutors. For non-Anthropology students taking this course, a formative essay may be submitted to the course teacher.

Texts may be chosen from among the following and other works; Veronique Benei, Schooling Passions: Nation, History, and Language in contemporary western India; Michael Taussig, My Cocaine Museum; Pardis Mahdavi, Passionate Uprisings: Iran's Sexual Revolution; Rane Willersley, (2007) Soul Hunters:  Hunting, Animism, and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs; Sharon E. Hutchinson (1996), Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State; Rebecca Cassidy (2002), The Sport of Kings: Kinship, Class, and Thoroughbred Breeding in Newmarket.  Detailed reading lists are provided at the beginning of the course.

A three-hour examination in the ST worth 80%. Two assessed essays (2,000-2,500 words each) on per term (20%).