Teaching Anthropology

Teaching Anthropology Through Contemporary Crises

Allison Schlosser*, Shana Harris* — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700

Doing Right by Our Undergraduates: Nurturing Possibilities through Collaborative Approaches

Laura Heinemannn — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700

Undergraduates are coming of age in increasingly perilous times. Anthropology’s hallmark use of ethnography offers much for teaching in this moment, through its capacity to navigate uncertainty, foster understanding across differences, centre empathy and real-world engagement, and, above all, promote collaboration. Acknowledging the particular positioning of my institutional context, I detail how collaborative approaches to advising, group work, peer assessment, and community-engaged experiential learning can nurture a fuller sense that we need not – and do not – navigate crisis and uncertainty alone.

Offering Space for Change in Crisis: Critical Pedagogy for the Environmental Sciences

Melva Trevino, Amelia Moore — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700

In this article, two university professors explore what it means to teach anti-colonial and anti-racist anthropological theory and ethnographic methods to graduate students at an American Land Grant University and predominantly white institution (PWI) within environmental scientific research and policy graduate programs. The goal of this article is to show how critically informed anthropological pedagogies can sustain diverse educational spaces in times of crisis that foster empathy, ethical transgression, and social transformation.

Teaching Anthropology in Polarizing Times: The Potential for “Weaponized Aggrievement” and Impacts on Minoritized Faculty

Nolan Kline — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700

In this article, I describe how teaching anthropology in polarizing times can potentially impact instructors. Using Florida as an example, I show how polarizing political contexts can embolden students to challenge faculty and coursework they view as ideologically incompatible with their own perspectives. These scenarios may result in some students engaging in what I refer to as “weaponized aggrievement”: leveraging the sentiment of feeling “wronged” for personal benefit and to maintain a sense of moral superiority. I describe how faculty whose identities are minoritized may be particularly vulnerable to weaponized aggrievement and offer suggestions for institutional support.

“Where Woke Goes To Die”: Teaching Through Routine Crisis in Florida

Shana Harris — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700

To fight against “wokeness” in higher education, Florida’s conservative-led government passed multiple laws that restrict the ability of faculty to teach and students to learn at the state’s public colleges and universities. This legislation created a learning environment hostile to discussions of race, diversity, gender, and other “controversial” topics. In this article, I summarize some of the political challenges currently facing Florida’s faculty and argue that recent education policies have contributed to a sense of routine crisis among faculty. I discuss how this crisis, characterized by disorientation, distrust, and disillusion, negatively affects faculty morale and their ability to teach effectively.

Teaching the Anthropology of Addiction and Cultivating Hope: Critical Pedagogy in an Era of Erasure

Allison Schlosser — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700

Teaching the anthropology of topics often considered controversial, such as “addiction” and the structural inequalities that shape it, is becoming increasingly challenging in the current climate of higher education in the United States. Neoliberal imperatives and threats to academic freedom, particularly in politically conservative states, have hindered the ability of teachers and students to engage in open conversations about social problems in classrooms, undermining public education’s democratic mission. This essay explores how teaching anthropology using a critical pedagogical approach provides an opportunity to cultivate critical and transformative hope, resisting threats to our ability to foster engaged citizenship among students.

An Introduction to Trauma-Informed Teaching in Anthropology

William Tantam — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0800

This editorial introduces the significance of a trauma-informed approach for teaching and learning in anthropology. It will provide an overview of key terms relating to trauma, and how these might apply to anthropological teaching and learning contexts. It also considers what these teaching contexts might reveal about trauma-informed approaches, drawing on conversations with colleagues from across different institutions into their experiences working with trauma. It identifies the centrality of trust and control in reflecting the needs of participants and students.

This collection brings together pieces from anthropologists working at different academic career stages: from those writing up PhD fieldwork to those reflecting on longer teaching and research engagements with trauma. The issue also comprises of work on very different ethnographic contexts including the UK, Greece, Italy, South Africa, Palestine, and Lebanon. This heterogeneity illustrates the usefulness of trauma as a lens through which to interpret multiple forms of experience, whether considering how to teach students about challenging topics, engage with those who have experienced trauma, or make sense of how to navigate our own experiences. Overall, it suggests that conversations around how to work with trauma need to be had with others - between students, colleagues, departments, and institutions.

Keywords: Trauma, vicarious trauma, historical trauma, trauma-informed approaches

Trauma and Emotion in Decolonising Anthropology

Trudi Buck, Abigail Lewis — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Teaching a module entitled ‘Decolonising Anthropology’ means having to approach numerous difficult and challenging subjects with students. It also means having to respond to and reflect on the traumatic responses that these topics bring about in individuals. During classes in this module, on the use of human remains in biological anthropology, students have become overwhelmed by the subject matter and removed themselves from the laboratory. Students have also expressed anxiety and feelings of uncertainty due to the assessment of this module, where we encourage the production of alternative assessment types and learning outcomes as a reaction to traditional essay style submissions. This paper highlights the impact of learning about decolonising the curriculum and challenging traditional pedagogical approaches on undergraduate students studying anthropology. Reflections from students will be discussed, including transformative feelings from overwhelm to having constructive conversations about unsettling and unfamiliar topics, the juxtaposition of conventional academic thoughts against personal emotions and narratives, and how thinking about decolonising anthropology has been an unsettling experience. Personal reflection will be given to how such ‘risky teaching’ (Harrison et al., 2023) can help create more effective teaching and learning within the discipline and help develop a trauma-informed pedagogy for anthropology.

Keywords: Pedagogy; Decolonising; Trauma; Reflective.

Performing Ethnography: From Dissonance to Resonance in Teaching Anthropology in China

Xinyan Peng, Mengzhu An — Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 -0700

In the Gender, Culture, and Society undergraduate course at a mainland Chinese university, an instructor had her students perform Emily Martin’s The Woman in the Body (2001) to engage their own embodied experience in an anthropology class. To clarify the epistemological significance of this pedagogical innovation, the instructor engaged in a three-year dialogue with her Chinese collaborator regarding her teaching experience. This collaboratively written article drawing on one author’s classroom ethnography and extensive discussions on pedagogical innovations, examines how dissonance –defined here as readers’ interpretative gaps when engaging with an ethnographic text –can be transformed into resonance –readers’ embodied engagement with the text –through a dramaturgical approach to teaching anthropology inspired by the work of Victor and Edith Turner, (e.g. performing ethnography). In mobilising Chinese students to perform ethnography, the frictions between the sociocultural context of the text and their own experiences were made apparent. By engaging with the text in an embodied manner, the students experienced a transformation from dissonance to resonance, and their subsequent discussions fostered reflexivity and empathy. Inspired by the Turners’ theoretical framework and dramaturgically oriented pedagogy, performing ethnography constitutes one of several pedagogical innovations that are urgently needed to re-evaluate anthropological education. We posit that students’ dissonance with ethnographic texts provides a foundation for pedagogical innovation. By transforming the classroom into a theatrical space –an experimental site for both ethnographic fieldwork and theoretical as well as methodological reflection –this approach contributes significantly to anthropological knowledge production.

From Roots to Digital Realms: Jordan Jamieson on Revitalising Indigenous Culture through Archaeology and Technology

Sacha Samouk, Jordan Jamieson — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0700

This interview with Jordan Jamieson explores the intersections of archaeology, technology, and the revitalisation of Indigenous cultural practices. With over ten years of experience in archaeology and cultural resource management (CRM), Jamieson reflects on the role of his upbringing in a community actively reclaiming its cultural practices and situates his work within wider trends towards decolonising archaeology in Canada. The interview begins with an overview of Jamieson’s own story and how those formative experiences have led him to where he is now advocating for Indigenous perspectives in archaeology. He stresses the positive potential of technology — particularly its ability to challenge the androcentric, colonial structures that have often been imposed on the discipline.

This interview examines tools like virtual reality, digital archives and 3D printing, and how these tools are used to preserve cultural heritage, by rematriating artefacts and engaging youth in Indigenous knowledge through cultural education. In addition to promoting community-based archaeological standards and procedures formed by Indigenous voices, Jamieson draws attention to the ethical concerns associated with digitisation, including ownership, authenticity, and accessibility. For the purpose of cultural preservation, he places a strong emphasis on the role that young people play as guardians of their emerging traditions and knowledge systems. This interview broadens the discussion of archaeology to include cultural themes, engaging readers beyond the traditional archaeological audience. The conversation also explores the roles of music, storytelling, and the creation of new spiritual spaces in cultural revitalisation. For Jamieson, technology is a tool that bridges traditional knowledge and modern innovation, creating a deeper connection to Indigenous heritage and inspiring collective learning and empowerment for generations to come. This interview offers a compelling narrative for readers interested in the evolving intersections of archaeology, culture, and technology through decolonisation.