In the classroom Culhane began to “mix imagination, creativity, and performance as research and research based performance into the teaching of ethnographic methodologies” as a way to address the complicated issues facing emergent ethnographers. Culhane finds that, pedagogically speaking, “Since ethnography asks students to really focus on both process and product, and thus on the intended audience,” incorporating performance into ethnographic studies “forces thinking about research with a clear intentionality.” As Culhane notes, performing research in the classroom “helps students ask – why are we doing this? And how might we best communicate and present this work? How do we actually put into practice commitment to addressing diverse audiences within and beyond the university?”
At the end of Culhane’s undergraduate class SA 402: The Practice of Anthropology, students put on a mini-conference (see video, below) where they are encouraged to consider unconventional options for presenting the research projects they carry out during the course. Students have experimented mounting small exhibits, performing dramatic monologues or small playlets, or with interactive performances with the audience. Culhane observed “because Anthropology really is a discipline that has had to account for itself, and anthropologists are acutely aware of the problems of representation, attempting to perform representation in a different way opens new challenges and new possibilities.” She noticed that “when someone tries to speak other people’s words they are confronted in a deeply embodied way with the same political questions as when they are writing and deciding how to describe and cite research participants’ stories – it exposes the problems of representation. Pedagogically working that through performance is very helpful. It also cultivates a general humility. It works well where we need it.”