What happens to anthropology when it uses film instead of written text as its main medium for exploring and conveying human experience in diverse cultural and social contexts? This course offers an overview of debates in visual anthropology and their influence on shaping the broader discipline of anthropology and ethnographic practice. By revisiting these debates, we examine theories and approaches in visual anthropology and camera-based research, preparing students to develop and critically evaluate their own ethnographic filmmaking and writing for the successful completion of their MA programme (visual track).
This course explores the relationship between anthropology and (audio-)visual media practices, highlighting theoretical ideas, research methods, and ethical considerations. Since the beginnings of the discipline, ethnographers have used audio-visual methods in their knowledge creation, driven by different ideas and motivations about the medium and what it can reveal about social relations. Students are encouraged to discuss key themes in visual anthropology, such as representation, embodiment, storytelling, mediation, cultural aesthetics, and visual ethics, and to develop their viewpoints in three short position papers and a group presentation. Exploring debates on power, diversity, authenticity, and experience enables us to examine the frameworks, regimes, and modes of knowledge production that influence contemporary views of visual ethnography and its “fields.”
Themes include:
- Visualizing Culture
- Decolonizing Visual Anthropology
- Multimodality
- Sensory Ethnography
- Envisioning multi-species relations