Paper short abstract:

I explore the generative potential of anthropology in an art school. My students turn fieldnotes into graphic novels and use art to illuminate theory. Anthropology inspires my students’ artistic practice, fieldwork has become part of their research practice, and drawing has become part of mine.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2015, I have taught anthropology to art and design students, both undergraduate and graduate, at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. I am the institution’s only anthropologist, indeed, the only social-scientist. In this paper I explore both the challenges and the joys of teaching anthropology within art schools and the generative possibility of drawing as an ethnographic method. Centrally, I share how my students’ ways of engaging with anthropological texts—from in-class doodles to stop-motion animation—have revolutionized the ways I teach.

Inspired by University of Toronto Press’s Ethno-Graphic series—anthropological monographs in graphic-novel form—and by Andrew Causey’s Drawn to See: Drawing as Ethnographic Method, my students turned fieldnotes into illustrations and used art to illuminate complex theoretical ideas. If one of the challenges for anthropology is the space between the richness and immediacy of fieldwork and the formality of academic prose, I suggest that illustration might bridge that gap. I will share how anthropology readings and ways of thinking have inspired my students’ artistic practice, how fieldwork has become part of their research practice, and how drawing has become part of mine.