Lisa
Oona and Emilia
Amy
Jason
Richard, Sheron & Sean
Damon
Dion
Bill Davis
Sabrina
Kathleen Terry-Sharp
Angel Jackson-White
Joslyn O.
americananthro1902
Michael F. Brown
AN Sept 2010
September Anthropology News In Focus commentaries on anthropology education are now posted on our Current Featured News page, free to the public throughout the month. This month’s In Focus articles are by Luke Eric Lassiter and Elizabeth Campbell; Silvia Torezani; Aaron Thornburg; Andrea L Jenkins; Anastasia Panagakos and Amanda Paskey; Lydia Brassard; Sally S Booth; Nafisa Fera; and Scott A Lukas. Full issue content is available via AnthroSource, including additional thematic articles from other sections by contributors Maureen Malloy and Jeanne M Moe; Jacquelyn Lewis-Harris and Alaka Wali; Beverly A Chiarulli, R Scott Moore, Sarah W Neusius, Ben Ford and Marion Smeltzer; and Marilynne Diggs-Thompson.
Anthropology education today is in a moment of transition. MA and PhD employment opportunities are changing, teachers and administrators are experimenting with new classroom formats and technologies, and educators are encountering new pedagogical standards and assessment models. The commentaries in this series consider the present and future of anthropology education as experienced by students and teachers in a variety of settings, from K-12 to university classrooms. They examine opportunities for and limits of flexibility in educational environments, and teaching strategies to engage introductory and advanced anthropology students alike.
Filed under: Publications Tagged: | anthropology education, Anthropology News
I am an admirer of Luke Eric Lassiter’s ethnographic work in communities. What he and Elizabeth Campbell are suggesting is undergraduate and graduate education that goes beyond just earning a degree, but becoming a catalyst for change in our complex world. It demands a paradigm shift in anthropology education that takes students out of just an outreach mode in a confined project and extends their commitment to a community. Some anthropologists have accomplished this. Some have just taken and left. The notion that anthropology can be done around the corner is not new, but they reinforce its possibilities.
I must say that, while a number of interesting ideas appeared in that AN, the main trend, not only in anthro but in higher education as a whole, was not addressed at all: the steamrollering of traditional faculty and their replacement by badly underpaid and low-or-no benefit PT “adjunct” or “contingent” faculty: I certainly mean the latter no insult, particularly as I am one of them, and we are as a group as competent and dedicated as any. But the mere phrase “employment opportunities are changing,” which appears emblematic of many of the articles in suggesting that the current dynamics are benign—an opportunity for experimentation and new ideas—is not going to turn around the deprofessionalization of academic faculties: something else is required, and very urgently. Most classes in the United States are now taught by “adcons” who have thus far not been able to effectively represent their own interests. This may be changing, with the recent activities of COCAL and other groups, and with the establishment of New Faculty Majority (newfacultymajority.info), the first national non-profit devoted exclusively to advocacy for this, well, majority of faculty. What does this have to do with teaching, which was the focus of the September issue? New ideas are not likely to survive and thrive—in any university domain—if the faculty itself has been reduced to “casual” labor.
There’s certainly a lot to discuss about faculty in higher education. AN is actually developing an ongoing commentary series on academic labor which will start in December and run throughout 2011. Our hope is that contributors will write about the issues you mention and more. The call for proposals is being announced in the October AN.