Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom, 1st ed. 2020 Engaging the Legacy of Edith and Victor Turner

The contributors gathered here revitalize ?ethnographic performance??the performed recreation of ethnographic subject matter pioneered by Victor and Edith Turner and Richard Schechner?as a progressive pedagogy for the 21^st century. They draw on their experiences in utilizing performances in a classroom setting to facilitate learning about the diversity of culture and ways of being in the world. The editors, themselves both students of Turner at the University of Virginia, and Richard Schechner share recollections of the Turners? vision and set forth a humanistic pedagogical agenda for the future. A detailed appendix provides an implementation plan for ethnographic performances in the classroom.

Chapter 1: “The Foundations of Experiential Performance Pedagogy”

Chapter 2 "Points of Contact Between Anthropological and Theatrical Thought”

Chapter 3: “Performing Ethnography”

Chapter 5: “Structure, Anti-structure, and Communitas in the Classroom:  Notes on Embodied Theory”

Chapter 6: “Bridges to the Ancestors: Engaging Students with Ethnographic Performances in the Classroom”

Chapter 7: “The Smell of Smudge and the Work of Smoke:  Reenacting Native American Ritual in an Anthropology Course”

Chapter 8: “Grotto Water and Potato Chips:  Classroom Ritual Reenactments as Forms of Pedagogical Resistance”

Chapter 10: “Pedagogies of the Imagination: Toward a New Performative Politics”

Chapter 11: “Cultivating Empathy Through a Migration Simulation”

Chapter 12: “Moving Forward”

Susan Brownell is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA. As an undergraduate student of Victor Turner, she learned the value of ritual reenactments in education; she traces these foundational experiences through to her current research on sport and ritual.

Explores the foundations of ethnographic performance, including discussions of ethnographic and performance theory, embodiment and pedagogy, and anthropology and theater

Provides specific case studies of ethnographic performance in the classroom, including a photographic documentation and first-person student account of Turners' classic ritual reenactment seminar

Sets out a new pedagogical agenda for embodied, engaged, and experiential learning in anthropology and beyond