Public Anthropology and the Curriculum
Courses: Some recent or current course offerings with public anthropology components are: “Anthropology, Activism & the Role of the Intellectual,” “Human Rights Activism,” “Democracy, Development & Human Rights: Anthropological Perspectives,” “Human Rights and the Arts,” “Social Activism and its Motivations,” “Documentary Experience: A Video Approach,” “North Carolina Farmworkers in North Carolina: Roots of Poverty, Roots of Change.”
The department is planning to offer two public anthropology graduate and advanced undergraduate-level courses in 2007, one on media, speaking and writing skills for public scholars, and another on community-based and advocacy research.
Workshops: In 2006-07, the Graduate School is supporting a departmental workshop series entitled “Integrating Public Anthropology into the Cultural Anthropology Curriculum.” Designed and run by Cultural Anthropology graduate students, the workshops provide faculty and graduate students with models and approaches for integrating public anthropology activities and skills development into regular teaching practices.
Service-Learning: The Kenan Institute for Ethics’ Service-Learning program and the student-run LEAPS (Leadership through Experience, Action, Partnership and Services) program offer faculty and students assistance with incorporating service-learning components or options for courses. Students can request to include a service-learning component for many classes.
Complementary Training: Students who seek policy-training to complement their anthropological studies often take courses at Duke’s Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke Law School, or other departments and professional schools at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill.
Acting Together, Learning Together: Quite often, the most important skills and savvy are learned in the midst of taking action. Whether co-teaching a collaborative seminar at a federal prison, supporting Guatemalan activists on a public education campaign, lobbying for human rights compliant U.S. policy towards Nepal, working with community organizations to secure living wages, or organizing a campus coalition to address community concerns at Duke, faculty and students are involved in a variety of efforts where they learn skills and insights that make them stronger advocates and critical scholars.