Author: Recent teachinglearninganthro items

Review of Anthropological Theory for the Twenty-First Century: A Critical Approach by A. Lynn Bolles, Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz, Bernard C. Perley, and Keri Vacanti Brondo

First-generation college students (students whose parents did not complete a bachelor’s degree) are a growing population within U.S. colleges. These students often belong to historically underrepresented populations including racial and ethnic minority…

Review of Sugar Cane & Rum: The Bittersweet History of Labor & Life on the Yucatán Peninsula, by John R. Gust and Jennifer P. Mathews

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on experiential learning have been felt by students interested in forensic anthropology casework and lab training. Without access to labs and with cancellations of courses related to hands-on learning like human ost…

At the height of the pandemic, schools across the country shut down, shifting classrooms to a remote learning modality. While the use of emergency remote teaching (ERT) provided an alternative for schools, it was a difficult transition. Online learning…

Review of Gendered Lives: Global Issues, edited by Nadine T. Fernandez and Katie Nelson

Science education relies heavily on observable phenomena or imagery, making it by and large inaccessible to blind and low vision (BLV) students. As laboratory science courses are frequently necessary to complete general education requirements in higher…

This essay is a reflective letter from myself, the author, an undergraduate anthropology student at Rollins College in Central Florida, to pioneering anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Arising out of an anthropology course on the U.S. South, I reflect …

Teachers navigate funding cuts, political machination, sexual harassment and assault investigations, racism and White supremacy amid various locally constructed crises. Using bureaucratic violence and institutional betrayal – two interlinked, yet disti…

This article considers what UK-based higher education researchers Jan Meyer and Ray Land describe as “threshold concepts,” asking how these concepts might apply to the field of social/cultural anthropology. This is explored in relation to the practical…

This paper describes a course on Anthropology and Museums offered at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. The interface between anthropology and museums is of great relevance for the elaboration of an effective pedagogical strategy in teaching anth…

Review of Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), edited by Susan D. Blum

Review: Qualitative research methods (2nd ed.), by Monique Hennink, Inge Hutter and Ajay Bailey, London, SAGE Publications Ltd, 2020, 345 pp., ISBN: 978-1-4739-0390-6. ISBN: 978-1-4739-0391-3 (paperback)

The four fields within American anthropology are periodically under discussion, especially when it comes to applying them in a holistic way. Various roadblocks, both institutional and personal, currently prevent greater development of holistic studies….

Students in higher education are facing challenges with paying for their education. Cost of course materials, primarily textbooks, continues to be a financial concern. As a result, students often delay or simply do not purchase the materials they need …

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced myriad challenges for teaching anthropology and has altered the academic landscape for years to come. However, it has also brought new opportunities for improving coursework with creative digital methods and online …

The debate technique has the potential to encourage students to critically think and engage in anthropology courses in higher education. But debates can be challenging, especially when taking place in an online environment. This article presents the im…

As a central method of ethnographic research, participant observation is often utilized in college-level courses to prompt the development of applied and anthropological thinking. This article examines the possibilities of participant observation as a …

This paper functions as a narrative examining the firsthand account of a family encountering the mother’s diagnosis of ovarian and lung cancer.  This experience and its relationship with society is explored through concepts such as the percep…

This special issue results from email conversations begun in the summer of 2020 concerning COVID-19’s effects on the teaching and learning of anthropology in higher education. The Society for Applied Anthropology’s Higher Education Thematic Interest Gr…

In early March 2020, Teaching and Learning Anthropology (TLA) initiated a crowdsourced document entitled “Teaching COVID-19: An Anthropology Syllabus Project.” This essay reflects on TLA’s #COVIDSyllabus in the context of a broader shift toward the use…

This essay describes a film that was produced for a community-engaged research project in a Spring 2020 Medical Anthropology course. The authors collaborated with the Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide (SPTS) to make a video on how to practice …

Review of Explorations: An Open Invitation to Biological Anthropology, edited by Beth Shook, Katie Nelson, Kelsie Aguilera, and Lara Braff

This paper addresses two challenges in higher education that increased with the shift to online learning due to COVID-19: translating experiential learning online and supporting student engagement. While virtual reality can be mobilized to address both…

Although the COVID-19 pandemic created challenges for faculty and students alike, it was also a catalyst for new collaborations. Our faculty-student project capitalized on what the pandemic publicly exposed: the fact that human health and culture are i…