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Accepted Paper:
We Are Not Alternative: A Communal Take on Theorization and Canon in Anthropology Theory Courses
Madison Shomaker
(American University)
Nada Bahgat
(American University)
Elise Ferrer
(American University)
Through an evaluation and reflection of one syllabus and course, this paper strives to challenge epistemological, pedagogical, and ontological norms by detailing possibilities and material praxis of learning from a decolonized, anti-racist, and unsettled anthropological canon.
Paper Abstract:
In the fall of 2022, the incoming graduate cohort in American University’s Public Anthropology program enrolled in the Craft of Anthropology, a foundational social theory course required for the degree. This course section utilized a modified version of the Reworking the History of Social Theory for 21st Century Anthropology syllabus. By engaging with this course and syllabus, our classroom and readings became a cognitive and emotional space that expanded and challenged who and what we imagine as our intellectual lineage. It also questioned and destabilized broader epistemological, pedagogical, and ontological norms, those experienced and felt within the discipline and within our own minds. Through an evaluation and reflection of the syllabus and course, we strive to provide the original syllabus authors with documented outcomes and afterlives of their creation and demonstrate to the discipline at-large the possibilities and material praxis of learning from a decolonized, anti-racist, and unsettled anthropological canon.