3MA3 Media, Art, and Anthropology Department of Anthropology Professor Petra Rethmann Time: Tuesdays 14:30-15:20; Thursdays 14:30-16:20

Room: LS/ B130E Office: CNH 535 Office Hours: Tuesdays, 12:30-13:30 Contact: rethman@mcmaster.ca Course Description: The centrality of media to our lives is conspicuous. In fact, media are so prominent in our lives that two decades ago anthropologist Arjun Appadurai coined the term mediascapes to draw attention to the ways in which media help to shape localities and their dynamics. At the same, the increasing recognition of economic, cultural, and political flows in both national and transnational arenas has led to a rethinking of important anthropological concepts such as cultural homogeneity, authenticity, and the primordial. In this course we will pay attention to both developments. By looking in particular at anthropological and image-related studies that ask about the role of media in the contemporary world, we engage the following questions: How do anthropologists visually represent the other? How do we see the other, and what influences our modes of seeing (histories, ideologies, etc.)? How do we frame (for example, the politics of exhibition in museums) our world to make sense out of it? The analytical concepts and trajectories introduced in this course challenge stereotypes of media anthropology as being solely concerned with a) what has generally been called primitive art, and b) narrowly empiricist versions of market research (for example, asking television watchers what they think of certain programs). Drawing on a range of investigative methodologies and scholarly routes, we will not only examine the cultural meaning of media, especially photography and film, but also their production, effect, and circulation. In this course we look at cultural media through a bifocal lens. The first part of the course, entitled Regimes of Seeing and Representation, is dedicated to the history, limitations, and possibilities of ethnographic film. In drawing on three different examples from three different periods - Les Mitres Fous (The Mad Masters) (1953), Cannibal Tours (1988), and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) (2001) - we will examine what ethnographers have called anthropologys cinematic imagination. In using this term, this course moves away from the idea that the function of ethnographic film is primarily supplemental (with writing being ethnographys principle form) to ask how film pictures and frames the other and cultural worlds and, in turn, how the processes of picturing and framing shape our understanding of these others and the world. In the second part of the course, entitled Visual Cultures, we look at how images predominantly photography, but also other material objects work in particular cultural and historical contexts. The notion of work here is designed to tackle the ways in which media, especially photography, circulate in everyday and political life, and how they shape this life. We will also look at how photography is used by individuals and collectives to insert themselves into particular cultural and political context, and how it affects cultural histories and memories. We 1

will end the course by looking at what anthropologist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has called the exhibitionary complex that is, we will look at the ways in which museums exhibit particular objects, and how these framings inform our understanding of these objects. Classes will be structured on lectures, film screenings, and discussions based on assigned readings. ________________________________________________________________________ Required Readings Pinney, Christopher 1998 Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Engle, Karen 2009 Seeing Ghosts: 9/11 and the Visual Imagination. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. Readings for this course will be available on reserve in Mills Library. The required articles for this course (please see the course trajectory) can be downloaded on Jstor. Required Screenings: Les Mitres Fous (The Mad Masters), dir. Jean Rouch (1953) Cannibal Tours, dir. Dennis ORourke (1987) Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), dir. Zacharias Kunuk (2001) Punk: Attitude, dir. Don Letts (2005) Good Bye, Lenin, dir. Wolfgang Becker (2003)

________________________________________________________________________ Evaluation Attendance and Participation Mid-Term Exam Take-Home Exam (2500-2700 words, due Dec. 13)

23 % 32 % 45 %

Late assignments will be penalized by 2% per day. No assignments accepted after Dec. 15. ________________________________________________________________________ COURSE SCHEDULE Week 1 Thursday, Sept 9 Introduction to the Course

Week 2 Media, Art, and Regimes of Seeing Tuesday, Sept. 14 Lecture Thursday, Sept. 16 Lecture Week 3 The Ethnographers Tale: Madness, History, and Dream Tuesday, Sept. 21 Lecture; Required Reading: Paul Stoller. 1992. Artaud, Rouch, and the Cinema of Cruelty. Visual Anthropology Review 8 (2): 50-57. Thursday, Sept. 23 Lecture; Required Screening: Les Mitres Fous (The Mad Masters), Jean Rouch (1953) Week 4 Tourism and Ex-Primitives: Cannibal Tours Tuesday, Sept. 28 Lecture; Required Reading: David MacDougall. 1991. Whose Story is it? Visual Anthropology Review 7 (2): 2-10. Thursday, Sept. 30 Required Screening: Cannibal Tours, Dennis ORourke (1987) Week 5 Moving Beyond Difference: Indigenous Media and Self-Representation Tuesday, Oct. 5 Lecture; Required Reading: Monika Siebert. 2006. Atanarjuat and the Ideological Work of Contemporary Indigenous Filmmaking. Public Culture 18 (3): 531-548. Thursday, Oct. 7 Required Screening: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), Zacharias Kunuk (2001); Part I Week 6 Tuesday, Oct. 12 Required Screening: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), Zacharias Kunuk (2001); Part II Thursday, Oct. 14 Lecture; Discussion Week 7 Tuesday, Oct. 19 Review 3

Thursday, Oct. 21 Mid-Term Exam Week 8 Tuesday, Oct. 26 Required Screening: Punk: Attitude, dir. Don Letts (2005); Part I Thursday, Oct. 28 Required Screening: Punk Attitude, dir. Don Letts (2005); Part II VISUAL CULTURES I see photographs everywhere, like everyone else, nowadays; they come from the world to me, without my asking; they are only images, their mode of appearance is heterogeneous. Roland Barthes. Week 9 Photography and Memory Tuesday, Nov. 2 Lecture Thursday, Nov. 4 Lecture; Required Reading: Karen Engle. 2009. Seeing Ghosts: 9/11 and the Visual Imagination. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. Week 10 Photographys Framing and Unframing Tuesday, Nov. 9 Lecture Thursday, Nov. 11 Lecture; Required Reading: Christopher Pinney. 1998. Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Week 11 Aesthetics and Style: Parody, Satire, and Irony Tuesday, Nov. 16 Lecture Thursday, Nov. 18 Required Screening: Good Bye, Lenin, Wolfgang Becker (2003) Week 12 Socialist Culture in the Museum: Exhibiting Politics and the Everyday Tuesday, Nov. 23 Lecture 4

Thursday, Nov. 25 Lecture; Required Reading: Petra Rethmann. 2009. Post-Communist Ironies in an East German Hotel. Anthropology Today 25 (1): 21-23. Week 13 Tuesday, Nov. 30 Take-Home Exam Due: December 13 Thursday, Dec. 2 The End/Wrap-Up ________________________________________________________________________ COURSE REQUIREMENTS Attendance and Participation (23%) 22% of your final mark have been allocated for attendance and participation in class. In the first class, on September 9, I will not be taking attendance. You are allowed to miss 1 class without apology. Mid-Term Exam (32 %) A mid-term exam has been scheduled for October 21, 2010. It will consist of three questions. Two questions will be worth 10 %, while one question will be worth 13%. The mid-term exam will cover the range of materials we have been engaging from September 16 until October 19. Take-Home Exam (2500 words, not to exceed 2700; 45 %) The take-home exam is due December 13, 2010, by 4:00 pm in Chester New Hall 535. NO assignments will be accepted after December 15, 2010. The take-home exam will consist of three questions, each worth 15%. It will cover the entire range of course materials. ________________________________________________________________________ IMPORTANT NOTES The instructor and university reserve the right to modify elements of the course during the term. The university may change the dates and deadlines for any or all courses in extreme circumstances. If either type of modification becomes necessary, reasonable notice and communication with the students will be given with explanation and the opportunity to comment on changes. It is the responsibility of the students to check her or his McMaster e-mail and course websites weekly during the term and to note any changes. ACADEMIC DISHONESTY Academic dishonesty consists of misrepresentation by deception or by other fraudulent means and can result in serious consequences, e.g., the grade of zero on an assignment, loss of credit with a notation on the transcript (notation reads: Grade of F assigned for academic dishonesty), and/or suspension or expulsion from the university. 5

It is your responsibility to understand what constitutes academic dishonesty. For information on the various kinds of academic dishonesty please refer to the Academic Integrity Policy, Appendix 3, www.mcmaster.ca/senate/academic/ac integrity.htm The following illustrates only three forms of academic dishonesty: a) b) c) 2) Plagiarism, e.g. the submission of work that is not ones own for which other credit has been obtained. (Insert specific course information, e.g., style guide). Improper collaboration in group work. Copying or using unauthorized aids in tests and examinations FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES E-MAIL COMMUNICATION POLICY

Effective September 1, 2010, it is the policy of the Faculty of Social Sciences that all e-mail communication sent from students to instructors (including TAs), and from students to staff, must originate from the students own McMaster University e-mail account. This policy protects confidentiality and confirms the identity of the student. It is the students responsibility to ensure that communication is sent to the university from a McMaster account. If an instructor becomes aware that a communication has come from an alternate address, the instructor may not reply at his or her discretion. Email Forwarding in MUGSI: http://www.mcmaster.ca/uts/support/email/emailforward.html *Forwarding will take effect 24-hours after students complete the process at the above link