This course is an introduction to visual, sensory, and creative research methods and knowledge sharing practices in anthropology. This course investigates the earliest uses of film and photography by anthropologists and ethnographers at the turn of the 20th century, the rise of cultural and media studies during the 1960s and 70s, to the development of visual anthropology as a sub-discipline of anthropology in the 1990s. Throughout the course, we will examine the production, circulation, and reception of visual culture in forms such as photography, ethnographic films, advertising, comics, art, activism, gallery installations, and museum exhibitions. We will also consider how power and politics have always influenced representations of culture as well as the methodological and ethical issues involved when using visual and sensory research methods.
This course investigates the history of Canada through the production and circulation of visual and material culture. Photographs, monuments, museums, exhibitions, architecture, artworks, music, radio, and film have all contributed to how Canada as an idea, a place, and a nation has been created. Beginning with the period just after Confederation this course moves historically and thematically through representations of Canada from: colonial expansion and settlement; the vast landscape and national parks; labour strikes and migration movements; the two World Wars; the growth of visual arts, museums and galleries; language struggles; the National Film Board and Canadian Broadcast Company; monuments, sports, and celebrations; and the development of human rights and social justice movements. Through these themes, this course interrogates the concepts of Canadian nationhood, identity, and collective memory. Given the territories now known as Canada include Indigenous peoples, descendants of settlers, and new immigrant communities, what exactly does it mean to be Canadian? What constitutes a sense of “Canadian-ness” or the culture of “Canadiana”? How has the image of Canada been created and distributed both nationally and internationally? And finally, what does it mean for certain communities living within Canada to define their culture and citizenship against the concept of being Canadian? These are some of the questions this course explores.
This course provides a critical examination of the anthropological study of art beginning with significant work in the field from the early twentieth century through its intersection with recent visual cultural theory and contemporary artistic practice. Reading undertaken in this course will examine a broad range of topics that span foundational essays on art and society to the exploration of the relationship between contemporary art and current issues for anthropology and anthropological theories of culture. Lecture and reading topics may include: the use and critique of the category “primitive art”; discussions of aesthetics through an analysis of form, style and meaning of art from around the world throughout the 20th century to the present; Indigenous Arts and global cultural tourism; and the art and practice of individual contemporary artists whose interests intersect with those of contemporary anthropologists interested in colonial/postcolonial identities and politics, appropriation of intellectual and cultural property and heritage as well as interdisciplinary collaboration. ANTH 305 hosts the Salish Visiting Artist Program in which a contemporary Salish artist leads a 4-5 weeks long unit with students to create a hands-on art project.
This course focuses on the roles that collections of material culture play in the production of knowledge and relationships between various communities of peoples, and the role of curating and exhibiting this material and knowledge through the 20th century to present day in contemporary museums. The course provides a brief historical overview of the history of the relationship between museums and the discipline of anthropology in North American and then spends the majority of the term focused on contemporary topics of importance to what has been called the decolonization and Indigenization of museum collections, exhibitions, and curatorial practice. Topics include: an overview of the colonial history of museums and anthropology’s role in creating collections; current critical exhibition strategies; refiguring the role of collections in museums in a digital age; rethinking the role of community through collections based research and curatorial practice with an emphasis on community based research projects and exhibitions. Throughout the course emphasis will be placed on Canadian examples and case studies and in particular, those engaging First Nations, Metis, and Inuit communities and collections of material culture. Experiential learning opportunities with collections and exhibition planning will utilize the Robert Aller Collection of Indigenous artworks owned by the Legacy Art Galleries.
This seminar provides students an opportunity to explore and develop an understanding of the use of photography in the discipline of anthropology over the late 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries. The readings in the course focus on the theoretical and methodological engagement of anthropologists with making images using photographic cameras. As such, the course also has a focus on the development of applied skills where students will learn to use photographs as data and the camera as a research tool.
This summer intensive course provides an immersive, hands-on introduction to ethnographic drawing. Throughout this course, students are encouraged to read a selection of graphic novels that emphasize the potential of graphic communication to share and explore stories that matter. In class and during field trips, students produce weekly drawings to develop their skills and strategies for representing the world as they experience it. The major project of the course is the creation of an original graphic narrative.
Visual Stories Lab 