Co-seminar in Anthropology (Half-Term): Anthro-Archives & Ethno-Stories

The goal of the course is to problematize two things: the notion of anthropological archive and practices of ethnographic storytelling that they engender. To pursue this dual task, each week we will explore 1) how the assignment of epistemic value to a distinctive set of artifacts (e.g., objects, bodies, texts, memories, rhetorical tropes, etc.) generates a coherent source of discernable knowledge, and 2) how this knowledge is disciplined and naturalized with the help of theoretical framing, narrative conventions, and plot techniques.