Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Spring 2021 - SA 474 E100

Cultures, Politics and Performances (A) (4)

Class Number: 5564

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Jan 11 – Apr 16, 2021: Tue, 5:30–9:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

  • Instructor:

    Dara Culhane
    culhane@sfu.ca
    Office Hours: By appointment

  • Instructor:

    Peter Dickinson
    ped@sfu.ca
    Office Hours: By appointment

  • Prerequisites:

    Minimum 72 units including SA 101 or SA 201W.

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

From intimate dramas of everyday life to multi-media staging of political events, performances of various kinds infuse social/cultural/political relations among people(s), shape understandings of pasts, and evoke visions of futures. We explore contemporary work that engages questions generated by anthropologists, performance studies scholars, and artists.

COURSE DETAILS:

Performance, as an object of study and a method of critical research and analysis, has increasingly become a way to bridge scholarly inquiry across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Among other things, this has meant paying attention to how the body and the senses produce knowledge and ways of being in the world. This practice-based course is co-taught by performance studies scholars in Anthropology and Contemporary Arts. We will explore the theoretical and methodological intersections among performance studies and two emerging fields in anthropology: multisensory ethnography, which explores relationships between embodied sensory experience and historical, cultural, and political contexts; and multimodal ethnography, which engages media in conducting fieldwork, and in analyzing and communicating ethnographic work.

As both performance studies and ethnography speak meaningfully to our relationships to place, and how we embody and are entangled with different material spaces, we will take as our primary objects of study our immediate sensory environments. Given the current circumstances of our global pandemic, these environments will be multiple and varied, and potentially very radically circumscribed. Nevertheless, we will engage with a range of sensory studies (texts, films, material archives) exemplary of researchers’ sensuous, performative, and often practice-based entanglements with the multiple and overlapping worlds they embody, including the scholarly, the artistic, the activist, and the community-engaged. We will also use two methods that derive from (and also cross over) anthropology and performance—namely, keeping an ethnographic diary/field notebook and developing and working with improvisatory scores—in order to “make sense” of our place-based investigations. These methods will, in turn, seed students’ final projects.

Grading

  • Ethnographic diary 30%
  • Canvas discussion contributions 10%
  • Project proposal 10%
  • Project reading list & shared score 10%
  • Final project 40%

NOTES:

Please Note: Non-SA students may request permission to enroll in this course directly from the instructor. Interested students can contact Dr. Dara Culhane at culhane@sfu.ca for more information.

Grading: Where a final exam is scheduled and the student does not write the exam or withdraw from the course before the deadline date, an N grade will be assigned. Unless otherwise specified on the course syllabus, all graded assignments for this course must be completed for a final grade other than N to be assigned. An N is considered as an F for the purposes of scholastic standing.

Grading System: The Undergraduate Course Grading System is as follows:

A+ (95-100) | A (90-94) | A- (85-89) | B+ (80-84) | B (75-79) | B- (70-74) | C+ (65-69) | C (60-64) | C- (55-59) | D (50-54) | F (0-49) | N*
*N standing to indicate the student did not complete course requirements

Academic Dishonesty and Misconduct Policy: The Department of Sociology & Anthropology follows SFU policy in relation to grading practices, grade appeals (Policy T 20.01) and academic dishonesty and misconduct procedures (S10.01‐S10.04). Unless otherwise informed by your instructor in writing, in graded written assignments you must cite the sources you rely on and include a bibliography/list of references, following an instructor-approved citation style.  It is the responsibility of students to inform themselves of the content of SFU policies available on the SFU website.

Centre for Accessible Learning: Students with hidden or visible disabilities who believe they may need classroom or exam accommodations are encouraged to register with the SFU Centre for Accessible Learning (1250 Maggie Benston Centre) as soon as possible to ensure that they are eligible and that approved accommodations and services are implemented in a timely fashion.

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

All readings will be available through Canvas, the SFU Library, or otherwise online as noted.

Registrar Notes:

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS

SFU’s Academic Integrity web site http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating.  Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.

Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the University community.  Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the University. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the University. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html

TEACHING AT SFU IN SPRING 2021

Teaching at SFU in spring 2021 will be conducted primarily through remote methods. There will be in-person course components in a few exceptional cases where this is fundamental to the educational goals of the course. Such course components will be clearly identified at registration, as will course components that will be “live” (synchronous) vs. at your own pace (asynchronous). Enrollment acknowledges that remote study may entail different modes of learning, interaction with your instructor, and ways of getting feedback on your work than may be the case for in-person classes. To ensure you can access all course materials, we recommend you have access to a computer with a microphone and camera, and the internet. In some cases your instructor may use Zoom or other means requiring a camera and microphone to invigilate exams. If proctoring software will be used, this will be confirmed in the first week of class.

Students with hidden or visible disabilities who believe they may need class or exam accommodations, including in the current context of remote learning, are encouraged to register with the SFU Centre for Accessible Learning (caladmin@sfu.ca or 778-782-3112).