MA Visual Anthropology / Course details

This experiential learning course is directed towards providing hands-on experiences of the creation and interpretation of images and sounds and the various possible ways in which they may be applied and combined in anthropological enquiry. The course introduces students to methods in sensory media, giving them the opportunity to create a collaborative media project, and present these in a public forum. The terms “sensory media” or “sensory methodologies” describe the use of multimodal media in ethnographic research; these methods approach ethnographic research through the senses, while creating media objects that provide ways for others to engage with the ethnographic setting through the senses. Media used in the course is both digital and analog. Students will learn methods of documentary photography, photo-elicitation, field recording, sound walking and how to work with different forms of data and archive sources. Materials generated will thus include sound recordings, photographs, found images, maps, drawing, writing (diaries, blogs, essays) and film.

This course is organized around themes of air, water, earth, and fire as subjects and means for linking multi-modal, visual and audio media methods and sensory practices to anthropological research about urban ecology, primarily in the city of Manchester and by comparison, with the city of Austin, Texas as part of a Global Virtual Exchange program. It is designed so as to combine critical investigation and creative exploration through the following step-by-step process:

- Firstly, by identifying research questions which link these elemental themes to the history and contemporary situation of the city (of Manchester/ Austin).

- Secondly, to ‘think through’ these questions in terms of anthropological theories and relevant comparisons drawn from the literature.

- Thirdly, to look critically at prior examples of work with visual and audio media that already explores these themes and questions, in order to identify relevant styles and methods.

- Finally, to apply in practice particular forms and applications of visual and audio media and through experiment and experiential learning to discover relevant means of documenting, moving through and sensing the city.

In this way, the course foregrounds an engaged, ecological and ethical approach that both acts on the city and reflects on its tools and methods of engagement. For instance, an investigation of alternative energy sources (“fire”) might choose to use analog media (walking and drawing) rather than a battery powered video camera. Or an exploration of urban gardening (“earth”) might listen to the interactions between gardeners and plants, making audio recordings based on an understanding of that relationship as learned through ethnographic research.

Knowledge and Understanding:  The course introduces students to methods in sensory media. The terms “sensory media” or “sensory methodologies” describe the use of multimodal media in ethnographic research; these methods approach ethnographic research through the senses, while creating media objects that provide ways for others to engage with the ethnographic setting through the senses.

Intellectual skills: Skills in analysing through making things, learning how to combine different materials, and learning how to translate a concept into a method. Moreover, students will move from the experience of their own senses to an awareness of how senses matter for others in a variety of contexts, and how the senses are themselves culturally constructed.

Practical skills:  This experiential learning course is directed towards providing hands-on experiences of the creation and interpretation of images and sounds and the various possible ways in which they may be applied and combined in anthropological enquiry. Students will learn methods of documentary photography, photo-elicitation, field recording, sound walking and how to work with different forms of data and archive sources. Materials generated will thus include sound recordings, photographs, found images, maps, drawing, writing (diaries, blogs, essays) and film.

Transferable skills and personal qualities: The ecological emphasis of the course is sustained through a reflexive approach to the media itself. It considers what it means to move around the world at the present moment, in relation to both climate and social issues. By teaching skills for changing the environment, the course is not just about description but about acting on the world. This will be achieved in part by connecting where possible to shared local, national and international initiatives around climate change and sustainability.

COURSE ORGANISATION:

The syllabus is organized around the elements of air, water, earth, and fire, each module adopting a ‘flipped classroom’ approach whereby students complete self-directed work before and in anticipation of lectures.

The class will be split into small groups for the purposes of seminar and tutorial work, with around six to eight persons in each group. The groups will be formed during the first meeting of the course. Students who wish to change groups are free to do so but must inform the course leader.

Work for this course will comprise the following elements each week:

1.  One or two Pre-class exercises, to be carried out individually by students which are about learning critical skills.

2. An on-line ‘lecture’ with three twenty minute long (approx) sessions of pre-recorded content streamed ‘live’ (synchronously) through the Blackboard collaborate platform.

3. The lecture content will be interspersed with two small group ‘live’ (synchronous) seminars on the zoom platform, of around 25 minutes in length.

- The topics of these seminars will draw directly on the pre-class exercises and are exercises in applying critical skills and in working together as a group.

4. Tutorial sessions following on from the lecture (after a break) will be a space for group discussion and feedback based on carrying out a practical exercise in creative / sensory methods.

- There will be one set of practical exercises for each of the four blocks.

- These exercises will be the basis for producing the assessed work for the whole course.

- In the first tutorial session for each of the four blocks, the groups will discuss, share ideas and plan the practical exercise.

- In the second tutorial for each block students will have uploaded the work from the practical exercise to the Discord platform (see below) prior to the tutorial. The tutorial group will then coordinate virtually in discussing and giving feedback on this work in their own agreed times prior to the scheduled time of the tutorial.

- During the tutorial time there will be direct feedback from the course leader on this work and the group discussions.

Global Virtual Exchange course interaction:

Interactions with the students in the anthropology department at the University of Texas, Austin as part of the Global Virtual Exchange, will take place on five occasions (each lasting no more than 90 minutes) during the course, using the Zoom platform. Each meeting will involve two group discussions revolving around critical reflection, the nature of evidence and applied anthropology.

- The first discussion will be a reflection on the sensory methodologies that have been employed in the most recent block of the course. The sensory methodologies taught in the course are based on the idea that the sensory apperception of the world is in significant respects a cultural construction. The discussion will reflect on what the cultural constructedness of the senses involves, both in terms of your own sensory experience and that of others.

- The second part of the discussion will use the practise based, media led ethnographic investigations to reflect on what kind of evidence they may produce and offer about issues concerning pollution, water, nature and biodiversity and energy that have been identified at an urban policy level in these cities. Part of this exercise should involve looking at the links to policy documents and thinking critically about the kinds of visual evidence, data and language that is presented there. Finally, we may discuss how the methods underpinning your work could be applied to improve the future of the two cities, on issues related to environment, ecology and planning.

BLOCK A: AIR

Topics:  Pollution, Noise, Weather, Breath, Smell/Scent, Virus.

Field sites / materials: Weather reports, Pollution/pollen count index, Shipping forecast, Noise surveys, Covid 19 Pandemic reports. 

Theories: Atmosphere, Sensory Anthropology 

BLOCK B: WATER

Topics: Plumbing, sewers, underground, drinking water, lakes, pools, rain, oceanic geographies, waves (water and sound), floods, Transportation, flows.

Field sites and materials: Manchester canals and rivers, lakes, plumbing, weather, boats, sea, swimming pools, sewers,

Theories: Fluidity/Flow

BLOCK C: EARTH

Topics: Parks, Gardens, Shopping Malls, Public squares, Cemeteries, Sidewalks, pathways, , nodes, trees and plants, multispecies sense 

Theories: Multi-species anthropology, Soundscape, Image of the City (K Lynch)

Field sites and materials: Park, gardens, nodal points (Kevin Lynch) e.g. corner, alleyway, square, cemeteries, balcony, window.

BLOCK D: FIRE

Topics: Light, Temperature (heat and cold), Transport systems, Data. Public gatherings. astronomy (sun and stars), gatherings, protest movements.

Theories: Transduction, Infrastructure

Field sites and materials: Radio Observatories (Jodrell Bank); mobile masts; satellite dish; internet cables; power stations. Fire services.

Students must produce a portfolio comprising a selection of two of the creative exercises carried out during the course for 15 credits of assessment and all four of the creative exercises for 30 credits of assessment.

The portfolio is worth 100 % of the total marks for the course.

Formative Assessment is offered via the four creative exercises which are discussed in peer groups and class discussion in the tutorial time each week that follows the lecture.

For the portfolio each individual creative exercise is then worth one half (for 15 credit) or one quarter (for 30 credit) of the total mark.

Each piece of work should comprise all 3 of the elements (two audio and one visual element) listed foreach creative exercise. 

Text for each piece of work should not exceed 1500 words and for two pieces (15 credits) should be 3000 words and for four pieces of work should be 6000 words.  Number of images should not exceed 60 (counting all four pieces of work) and 30 for 15 credits.  Maximum of 10 minutes of sound recording for 15 credits and 20 minutes for 30 credits

Feedback is offered in class and on-line for all of the four formative creative exercises

GENERAL COURSE MATERIALS

Literary Readings:
Georges Perec - An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris;
Italo Calvino - Invisible city;
Orwell, G. 1963. Down and Out in London and Paris. Penguin Books;
Berger, J & J. Mohr. 1989. The Seventh Man. Granta Press;
Sebald W G. 1998 The Rings of Saturn. Harvill Press, London;

Sensory Methods Readings:

Hockey, J. 2009. Switch on: sensory work in the infantry. Work Employment Society . 23: 477-493;
Pink, S, 2013. Engaging the Senses in Ethnographic Practice Implications and Advances. The Senses & Society. 8: 3, 261–267;

Photography and visual image Readings:

Pink, S. Kurti, L & A. Afonso, eds. Working Images: Visual research and representation in ethnography.  Routledge Press;
Cox, R. with C. Wright. 2012. ‘Blurred Visions: Reflecting Visual Anthropology’. In The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology, ed. R. Fardon & J. Gledhill. London: Sage Press, pp 1424-1463;
Collier, J. 1967. Visual Anthropology: photography as a research method. Holt, Rinehart and Winston;
Prosser. J, ed. 1998. Image-based Research. Routledge Press;
Rose, G. 2000. Visual Methodologies. An Introduction to Interpreting Visual Objects. Sage Press Sontag, S. 1977. On Photography. Penguin Press;
Barthes, R. 1982. Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard. Jonathan Cape;

METHODS-SOUND:

Bull, M & L.Back 2003. (eds) The Auditory Culture Reader. Berg Press;
Erlman, V ed. 2004. Hearing Cultures Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity. Berg Press;
Attali, J. 1987. Noise, The Political Economy of Music. University of Minnesota Press;
Feld, S, and D Brenneis. 2004 Doing Anthropology in Sound. American Ethnologist 31: 4, 461-474;
Samuels, D, L Meintjes, A M Ocha and T Porcello. 2010 Soundscapes, towards a sounded anthropology  Annual. Review. Anthropology. 39: 329–45;
Rice, T. 2003. Soundselves: An Acoustemology of sound and self in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Anthropology Today. 19: 4-9;
Stoller, P. 1989. ‘Sound in Songhay Possession, Sound in Songhay Sorcery.’ In The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 102-122;
Basso, K. 1972. “To give up on words: silence in Western Apache Culture.” In Language and Social Context edited P.P. Giglioli;
Wynne, J. 2010. “Hearing Faces, Seeing Voices: Sound Art, Experimentalism and the Ethnographic Gaze”. In Between Art and Anthropology edited A Schneider and C Wright;
Helmreich, S. 2007. An anthropologist underwater: Immersive soundscapes, submarine cyborgs, and transductive ethnography. American Ethnologist, 34: 4, 621–641;
Cox, R. 2008. Wandering without purpose: auditory journeys through History and Memory in Nagasaki. Special issue of ‘Journeys’: ‘The Map is not the territory, Mind, Body and Imagination as Globally Human. Edited by Andrew Irving;
Hirschkind, C. 2001. The Ethics of Listening: Cassette-Sermon Audition in Contemporary Egypt. American Ethnologist 28: 3, 623-649;
Butler T. 2007. Memoryscape: How Audio Walks Can Deepen Our Sense of Place by Integrating Art, Oral History and Cultural Geography. Geography Compass.10: 11, 360-72.

Ethnographies:
Taylor, J.1998 Paper Tangos. Duke University Press;
Taussig, M.1993. My Cocaine Museum. Chicago University Press;
Feld, S. 1990. Sound and Sentiment. University of Pennsylvania Press;
Stewart, K.1996. A Space on the side of the Road. Princeton University Press;
Biehl J. 2005. Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press.