Anthropology Today Beyond Text

SOAN10372 Anthropology Today Beyond Text 10 Semester 2 Undergraduate Level 1 Angela Torresan Unit coordinator Lorenzo Ferrarini Unit coordinator Anthropology 1 FHEQ level (Framework for Higher Education Qualifications) ' First part HE study/Bachelors ' European Credit Transfer & Accumulation System Rating : 5.0 The course is team-taught by two visual anthropologists. It will follow the same structure as in Semester 1, with a lecture followed by a seminar. The seminars will focus on the practical aspects of visual and multimedia production, alongside discussions of readings. Students will continue to be asked to present, debate, and work in small groups. The course is team-taught by two visual anthropologists. It will follow the same structure as in Semester 1, with a lecture followed by a seminar. The seminars will focus on the practical aspects of visual and multimedia production, alongside discussions of readings. Students will continue to be asked to present, debate, and work in small groups. The course unit aims to: This course unit follows Anthropology Today: Making Sense of the Contemporary World from Semester 1 to give first year students of Social Anthropology at Manchester a secure grounding in a variety of intellectual and practical skills through an introduction to the current research interests of their teachers. Manchester is at the forefront of an Anthropology Beyond Text, with research carried out in ethnographic film, photography, sound and mixed media at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology. This section of the course aims at providing students with the tools to engage audiovisual media as ways of understanding the world through an anthropological approach. Students will explore audiovisual media both to represent anthropological knowledge and as cultural artefacts to be investigated. The course combines theory and practice, giving students an introduction to basic skills with which to document aspects of culture through simple sequences of photographs, sound recordings, and short videos made on the students’ own smartphones. We will look at film, photography and sound not just as media that allow us to reach a wider audience with respect to academic writing, but also as tools to generate a different anthropological knowledge that often gets lost in the transformation of the ethnographic experience into text. In this sense the students will be asked to work on the complementarity between text and audiovisual media, at first developing guided exercises with very simple tasks, then organising them around a question and in interaction with relevant literature. Student should/will (please delete as appropriate) be able to Intellectual skills:  <ul> <li> Gain an introductory knowledge of the main debates on the use of media in anthropology.</li> <li> Critically evaluate photographs, films and sound recordings reflecting on the conditions of productions, detecting the author’s argument and understanding the implications of its reception by various audiences.</li> <li> Understand the specific contributions that audiovisual media can bring to anthropology.</li> <li> Understand the relationship between a research question, a chosen mode of representation and its reception.</li></ul> Practical skills:  <ul> <li> Learn the basics of still photography, sound recording and video making.</li> <li> Plan a small project and justify its chosen representational devices in the light of the research question.</li> <li> Design and realise a web-based ‘multimedia essay’ through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.</li> <li> Write in complementary way to the audiovisual components of a multimedia essay.</li></ul> Transferable skills and personal qualities: <ul> <li> Make critical use of a variety of media sources within and outside anthropology.</li> <li> Present arguments effectively with the support of a variety of media, and in a format that is easily shared online. </li> <li> Collaborate effectively in small groups.</li></ul> Teaching will consist of ten one-hour lectures followed by one-hour seminars. Students will be assessed on a final multimedia essay, in which they will produce a combination of text, still images, sound recordings and short videos. Students will be asked to pick a subject, document it audiovisually, and reflect on the implications of their representational choices in light of the literature and media examples seen during the course. The multimedia essay will be produced through a web platform called Adobe Spark, which can be used on any computer with a web browser. Students will not need specially performing computers to work with Adobe Spark, nor will they be required to install any software. Training on using the platform, which is very intuitive with a drag & drop interface, will be provided during tutorials and student will use the exercises to practice outside the class. 0 Other 100% 1 x Multimedia Essay 1500 words and audio visual material (100%) Electronic, personalised feedback Co - Requisite is SOAN10371 N Cox, Rupert A., Andrew Irving, and Christopher J. Wright, eds (2016). Beyond Text?: Critical Practices and Sensory Anthropology. Manchester: Manchester University Press. MacDougall, David (1998) Transcultural  Cinema.  Princeton University Press. MacDougall, David (2006) The Corporeal Image: film, ethnography and the senses. Princeton University. Nichols, Bill (2001) Introduction to Documentary. Indiana University Press. Pink, Sarah (2006) The Future of Visual Anthropology: engaging the senses. Rutledge. Lectures 10 Seminars 10 0 80