Hi everyone,
I hope you all have had a relaxing break since finals and graduation. After talking with quite a few of you, I thought it would be a good idea to start up a summer reading group this year. Because for many of us "anthropological theory" courses can be the most difficult anthropology courses we take, I thought it would be a good idea to do a refresher on many of the main points. I thought it would also be helpful to break down the main currents together this summer before some of us go to grad school or start up with theory courses again in the fall at UVU. I've written a preliminary syllabus for the readings. I have all the PDFs of the readings so no one needs to spend a cent. I've separated the readings into groups according to their relation with other readings on the list. For example, Group 1A and 1B should be read in that order and should both be read together to get the gist of the arguments. This way if there is a "Group" that you don't particularly think we should cover then lets vote on not reading it. Also if there is a different order of the groups (say you'd prefer to read more about "language" before you'd like to read about "culture") then lets vote on that as well. I thought we could read one group section per week (about three to four articles). There are 19 weeks worth of reading, and assuming we start the group next week then we start next week, then we have only 12-13 weeks worth of meeting together. That means that we need to knock off about 3 to 4 groups from the syllabus. Don't be shy, let me know what you think we should get rid of (I do suggest that we still read at least Group 1).
You can view the syllabus through google docs.
6 comments:
I'd love to join in- depending on where and when we meet. I'm not sure how much reading I can handle because I am taking 14 credit hours this summer, but I can do my best.
I don't remember when we had planned on meeting. What are the times and dates.
ditto
Ok, the syllabus looks amazing; Jordan, you're the best. I'm good with whenever and where ever (I know that's extremely helpful) so just keep things posted. I'm more than happy to supply treats and stuff. :) I'm stoked!
I've made a new post with a possible meeting date and time of May 14th, 12:30pm at the Coffee Pod. If that doesn't work for you let me know what would be an alternative date/time/place.
In terms of the readings I think what we will do is discuss the possible readings at the end of every meeting. Then I will share them by writing a new post with links to the articles on the blog immediately afterwards. I've already uploaded all of them and they are ready to share...so there shouldn't be a significant lag time like last year.
As far as the quantity of readings goes, I don't think we will really read more than three articles per week. If everyone wants to then there may be exceptions, however, somehow I doubt that is going to happen. In general I think for most of us three a week is more than enough for the summer. Still, I will post suggested additional readings for anyone who is interested. If you can't do the three readings, you are more than welcome come along and join in the conversation anyway.
If google docs doesn't work for anyone let me know and we can try to email the articles or figure something else out. I'd prefer not to email the articles because it can get cumbersome and often email accounts won't accept the size of some of the scanned chapters from books.
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