Course outline Today anthropologists representing every conceivable specialization find themselves in all sorts of contexts far-removed from the stereotypical anthropological environment:  anthropologists now hone their craft in hospitals, governmental agencies, department stores, urban archaeology sites, Wall Street, classrooms, McDonalds, and any situation in which critical and systematic analysis of cultural context can impact the conditions that folks face everyday.  This course examines anthropological practice in the contemporary world, focusing on how conventional anthropological theory and method can empower people to understand, critique, and even dismantle dominant sociohistorical conditions.   In this course we will examine the self-reflective and "engaged" perspective common to most applied anthropologists, probing how anthropologists who see themselves as part of contemporary social conditions can provide insights and intellectual tools that can provide various sorts of modest as well as quite radical self-empowerment.  Because contemporary anthropology is itself so complex and practiced in an ever-more complex world, we will spend some of our energy simply defining what it means to "apply" anthropological insight.  Rather than embrace the dictum that anthropologists should strive for "objectivity" and avoid "value judgments," we will accept that all anthropology is inherently politicized and must self-consciously confront very thorny ethical quandaries:  the modern world of burgeoning multiculturalism, persistent state-supported socioeconomic exploitation, rapidly expanding multinational capitalism, and spiraling personal and social injustices makes it clear that anthropologists must aggressively dissect the worlds that we both study and live in.  We will survey the scope of contemporary applied anthropology by examining the research of the IUPUI Anthropology faculty, outlining how the faculty see "applied" scholarship.  We also will examine the practical side of applied anthropology, surveying potential work contexts for anthropologists, the skills that are demanded of anthropologists today, and preparation for applied anthropological careers.

3:00-5:40 Tuesdays Cavanaugh Hall 435Office Hours: Mon 4:00-6:00, Tue 2:00-3:00 and by appt. Cavanaugh Hall 413E Course links Grading Due Dates Grade scale Grade calculation Course schedule  Defining Anthropology Essay Applied Essay Discussion facilitators Discussion facilitators Schedule Annotated Bibliography Oncourse Final Exam  Email Dr. Mullins

Organization

This is a survey course designed to introduce contemporary applied anthropology to anthropology majors or students with interests in anthropological insight.  Our departmental focus is on applied anthropology, so the course includes all of our faculty, who will each speak from their own research and experience on a wide range of applied settings, research questions, and perspectives.  I will guide weekly discussions and provide some continuity between subjects within the field, and faculty members will each guest lecture on an applied subject on which they have conducted research.

Grading

Attendance is of course essential to mastering the class material.  Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each class meeting on a course roster that circulates through class.  If you come in late, you must ensure that you sign this roster at the end of class; at the end of the semester I will not negotiate over the days you actually attended but forgot to sign the attendance roster. I will not allow students to sign the roster if they arrive halfway through the class meeting; please discuss any delays outside your control with me (e.g., caught in traffic jam, but not an errant alarm clock).  You are allowed one absence with no penalty to your final attendance grade.  After that your attendance grade of ten points (i.e., 10% of course grade) will be deducted two points for each absence.  Consequently, if you have two absences you will receive eight points for attendance; three absences received six points; four absences receive four points; five absences receive two points; and six or more absences will receive no attendance points.  An excused absence is a documented illness (i.e., a physician's note, not simply sniffles in the next class or sounding really crappy on the phone), a religious holiday recognized in the calendars of a well-documented faith, or participation in an Athletic Department-excused event.  I will be reasonably forgiving about things over which you have no control, like flat tires and sick children.  I will negotiate these things on a case-by-case basis, but please let me know immediately via email and do not plan to barter over these absences at semester's end.

You will be responsible for completing two exercises that outline how you see Anthropology in general and applied Anthropology in particular.  The first assignment aims to determine what we each think defines anthropology and outlines how we learned about and were attracted to Anthropology.  Rather than try to flesh out whether or not you have received a trustworthy introduction to Anthropology, this assignment is simply meant to reflect on how each of us became Anthropology students and what that really means to us.  That essay is due September 1 and is worth 5% of the course grade.  

The second essay due by October 27 articulates what you think "applied anthropology" actually means.  This definition is itself disputed among scholars who are applied anthropologists, so it is not essential or perhaps even desirable to develop an absolute definition of the field.  Likewise, you might reasonably have some indecisiveness about what it means to be "applied" that you are free to admit.  Nevertheless, we need to struggle throughout the semester with articulating how anthropology is practiced in the real world and what its goals might reasonably include.  Being able to articulate the basics of anthropological insight to other scholars, public constituencies, your peers, and possible employers is fundamental to being able to use those skills effectively in a wide range of sociocultural contexts.  Your essay should also examine the question of where you might choose to seek employment and why you see such a position or context as appropriate to applying anthropological training.  This essay is worth 20% of your course grade.

The course's final written product will be an annotated bibliography on a topic in applied anthropology.  The bibliography will provide citations and brief summaries of at least 25 sources focuses on a topic that must be approved.  You will be required to complete a abstract of roughly a paragraph that proposes your annotated bibliography topic and includes at least five references on that subject (no annotations will be required when the subject is handed in for approval).  The bibliographic citations must scrupulously follow the American Anthropological Association style guidelines; departures from the style guide will be penalized.  The proposal, due September 28 will count for 5% of your course grade; you will receive this full 5% as long as you turn in a topic, and if it is rejected or we modify it you will still be credited with those full points following revisions.  Deductions will only be made for proposals that are turned in late, do not include sufficient resources, are incomplete, or are not turned in at all.  I will NOT accept any annotated bibliography on a topic that is not previously approved.  The final bibliography will count for 30% of your course grade.  Any annotated bibliography that is not turned in by December 1 at midnight will receive no credit for the assignment; please do not procrastinate or leave yourself subject to a recalcitrant computer or some other twist of evil fate certain to befall you the day the bibliography is due.  I will be sympathetic but cannot complete grading within the allotted time if your bibliography is not turned in by the due date.

The final exam will be a take-home essay exam in which you can use any books, readings, notes, or other materials to answer a series of essay questions.  You will be required to email me a copy of the exam.  The final will be worth 15% of the final course grade.

Discussion Facilitators

Teams of two or three students will be responsible to serve as discussion facilitators for faculty presentations.   In most weeks a faculty member will appear in class between 3:00 and 4:15 and lecture on their research.  This lecture will be briefly introduced by the discussion facilitators, who will outline the faculty member's academic biography and their scholarship.  You may volunteer to present a particular faculty member's work; if there are no volunteers, discussion facilitators will be chosen at random by the end of the second week of class.  In the second half of the class meeting the discussion facilitators will be responsible for leading discussion on the faculty presentation and the readings assigned by that faculty member.  The co-facilitators must provide the other students in the class with at least a typed outline at least one page in length including discussion questions based on both the lecture and the readings.  Your presentations should 1) provide an introduction to the faculty member's academic training and scholarship; 2) present an organized outline of the presentation and readings' central ideas; and 3) pose questions the lecture and readings raised for you.  This discussion introduction should last about 15-20 minutes.  You are expected to pose at least four or five substantive questions to frame discussion and to subsequently actively lead the discussion.  The students not leading discussion on that day are responsible for contributing to the discussion and offering additional questions pertinent to the readings that may not have been raised. The grades for discussion facilitators who are not well-prepared will be penalized.  Discussion facilitators who forget their presentation date will receive our sympathy but will not receive any credit for the assignment.

Your class introduction must be preceded by a meeting with the faculty member during his/her office hours at least one week before their presentation.  Please keep in mind that faculty members are all over-committed, so you MUST contact them directly (copy all emails directly to me to document that you are indeed setting up these meetings).  You can click on their names in the Course Schedule below for their emails.  You should coordinate this meeting with the other discussion facilitators presenting the faculty member's work:  faculty will not meet with each of you individually.  During this meeting, you should secure biographical information, like where they trained, what their central research projects have been, how they came to be anthropologists, and how they define applied anthropology.  This will count for 15% of your course grade, and every member of the group will receive the same score unless there are special circumstances.  Any student that does not meet with the faculty member as required will be penalized half of these points.  Any discussion team that does not provide a written outline for the class will lose one-half of the assignment credit.  I reserve the right to return outlines to your group if they are not sufficiently thorough.

Due Dates

• September 1: Defining Anthropology Essay
• September 29: Annotated Bibliography Proposal
• October 27:  Applying Anthropology Essay
• December 1: Annotated Bibliography Due
• Final Exam to be announced

Calculating Course Grades

The applied anthropology essay, annotated bibliography, mid-term, and final will be assigned letter grades and calculated as the median score in that letter grade.  That means that if a student received a B+ on the annotated bibliography their grade would be numerically calculated as an 87.  For example, let's say that a hypothetical student did the following work in class over the semester:

• Attendance (10%):  had three absences over the semester; this would receive 6 points of the possible 10 attendance points (i.e., taking a two-point deduction for every absence after the first absence; if she had missed two days the attendance score would be 8 points)
• Annotated Bibliography Proposal (5%): turned in on time, received full 5 points
• Defining Anthropology Essay (5%): 5 points
• Applied Anthropology Essay (20%): received an A (95), so 95 X .20 = 19 points
• Annotated Bibliography (30%): received a B (84), so 84 X .30 = 25.2 points
• Discussion Facilitator (15%): received a B (84), so 84 X .15 12.6 points
• Final Exam (15%): received a B+ (87), 87 X .15 = 13.05 points

This means that this student would have received 85.85 points of the possible 100 points, which is a B+.

Aug. 25, Sept. 1, 8

Engaged Anthropology

Engagement and critical thinking:  self-reflection on social and anthropological position
Self-empowerment, or, reasons to question the Prime Directive: how anthropological tools can impact inequality and injustice

Give Me a Pen: Anthropological textuality, style guides, and writing in this class
Get to know the American Anthropological Association Style Guide
Anthropology research resources in the IUPUI Library:  Anthropology Resources Guide

Applied Anthropology and the Academy:  the blurred boundaries between practice and "pure" research
The Anthropologist as Intellectual, the Anthropologist as Critic: the responsibilities and dangers of critical Anthropological inquiry

The Ethics of Engaged Anthropology

DEFINING ANTHROPOLOGY ESSAY DUE SEPT. 1

Sept. 15

Guest Lecturer: Paul Mullins

READINGS:   

•  Race and Prosaic Materiality: The Archaeology of Contemporary Urban Space and the Invisible Colour Line (Mullins) (Oncourse)

• Race, Displacement, and 20th Century University Landscapes: An Archaeology of Renewal and Urban Universities (Mullins and Jones) (Oncourse)

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY PROPOSAL DUE SEPT 22

Sept. 22

Guest Lecturer: Elizabeth Kryder-Reid

• Museums: A Place to Work Planning Museum Careers (Glaser and Zenetou) (Oncourse)

• From Being About Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum (Weil) (Oncourse)

Sept. 29

Guest Lecturer: Jeremy Wilson

• Evidential Regimes of Forensic Archaeology (Zoe Crossland)  (Oncourse)

• Practicing Forensic Anthropology: A Human Rights Approach to the Global Problem of Missing and Unidentified Persons (Kimmerle)  (Oncourse)

Oct. 6

Guest Lecturer: Larry Zimmerman

READINGS:     

• Activism and creating a translational archaeology of homelessness (Zimmerman et al) (Oncourse)

• Homelessness (Zimmerman) (Oncourse)

• Homeless, Home-Making, and Archaeology: ‘To be at home wherever I find myself’ (Zimmerman) (Oncourse)

Oct. 13

Guest Lecturer:  Nick Rattray

• Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine (Farmer)  (Oncourse)

• Anthropology in the Clinic: The Problem of Cultural Competency and How to Fix It (Kleinman)  (Oncourse)

Oct. 20 FALL BREAK--NO CLASS

Oct. 27

Guest Lecturer Sue Hyatt

READINGS:  

• Moving Past Public Anthropology and Doing Collaborative Research (Lassiter) (Oncourse)

• Using ethnographic methods to understand universities and neoliberal development in North Central Philadelphia (Hyatt) (Oncourse)

APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY ESSAY DUE OCT. 27

Nov. 3

Guest Lecturer: Audrey Ricke

• How the Grass Became Greener in the City: On Urban Imaginings and Practices of Sustainable Living in Sweden (Isenhour)  (Oncourse)

• Public Understanding of Sustainable Tourism (Miller et al)  (Oncourse)

Nov. 10

Guest Lecturer: Gina Sanchez-Gibau

• Recent Changes and Trends in the Practice of Applied Anthropology (Kedia)  (Oncourse)

• The Convergence of Applied, Practicing, and Public Anthropology in the 21st Century (Lamphere) (Oncourse)

Nov. 17

Guest Lecturer: Jeanette Dickerson-Putman

• Caring for People with HIV (Makina)  (Oncourse)

• "Retirement Lost": The New Role of the Elderly as Caretakers for Orphans in Western Kenya (Nyembedha)  (Oncourse)

• Children Caring for their "Caregivers" (Skovdal)  (Oncourse)

Nov. 23 NO CLASS MEETING, work on your Annotated Bibliography

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE DEC. 1

Dec. 1

Guest Lecturer:  Holly Cusack-McVeigh

• The Giant Footprints (Cusack-McVeigh)  (Oncourse)

• A Collaborative and Mutually Beneficial Tribal Marine Science Workshop Format for Tribal Natural Resource Professionals, Marine Educators, and Researchers (Matsumoto et al)  (Oncourse)

Dec. 8

Course wrap-up

FINAL EXAM DUE DECEMBER 15

Last updated November 19, 2015