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What does it mean to be teaching regionally-based ethnographic courses in anthropology today? (Please discuss the merits and potential limitations of the very model of the regional ethnographic course in anthropology today

Laura Mentore

It does seem that regionally-based courses have become less common in the last couple of decades. I suspect this is partly an indirect consequence of the prevailing view that globalization has dissolved, or at least complicated, the very notion of regional distinctiveness. Nonetheless, or actually for those very reasons (and because I find that prevailing attitude a clunky way of thinking about global relations and problems), I still think Amazonia works as a regional course. Two reasons: (1) the ample overlap and continuity that remains in terms of the lifeways and cosmologies of the lowland South America’s indigenous peoples, and b/c there are proving to be just as many parallels in the kinds of interfaces they have with external actors and forces, eg NGOs, extractive industries, governments and (2) because there is a robust conversation among Amazonian specialists and with many of those specialists also being especially attentive to the discipline at large. In other words, one of the reasons I think Amazonia still works as a “regional studies” course is because there is actually a coherent body of literature that identifies itself as “Amazonianist”. I find that this literature has enough of a distinctive history and current healthy dialogue and debate that it can give students useful foundational knowledge about the discipline as a whole. I have formatted my course in such a way that students are immersed in the particulars of Amazonian sociality but come out of the experience with an understanding of its broader relevance to anthropological questions and arguments.

Kathleen Lowrey

I don’t remember where he said this (so maybe he didn’t), but I think Lévi-Strauss has an argument about the level of analysis where the anthropological magic happens: not the universal level (everybody eats) nor the individual one (I like chocolate and warm hugs) but the in-between bit. I think the same is true for regional studies: you can really see cultural dynamics in action there in a way you can’t at the global or too-local level. I know area studies has a bad rap because of Cold War shenanigans but I think it is where students really learn what makes anthropology different from sociology or cultural studies.

Jeremy Campbell

I teach in a small department at an undergraduate-only institution in the U.S. It has become increasingly difficult to interest students in a deep exploration of a particular place in the world; this may be because of an outsize focus on “skills” or the trend to overly generalize about “the global” in undergraduate education. I insist on teaching about Amazonia anyway. The class fills (barely), and students eventually come around to the notion that coming to know the histories and peoples of a different place has multiple, and significant, benefits. The trick, of course, is to not teach Amazonia as if it is a walled-off other world, knowable only through the arcane techniques of the ethnologist. The region offers plenty to grab the university student’s imagination. And though most students will never go to the Amazon, I find that a rigorous and intense exploration of the region invites students to develop sharper analytical skills; a more fulsome appreciation for sociocultural, ecological, and linguistic diversity; and the capacity to reflect critically on how their own lives and practices connect—or remain disconnected—to processes in Amazonia.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

These are the bread and butter courses in our program. We have general courses on anthro theory, methods, and key concepts (an ANTH of Language and a Social Org), but it is in our ethnographic area courses (on Amazonia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Himalayas, Southeast Asia, and Europe) that students get a more holistic picture. (In the past we’ve had people who could teach China, the Middle East, India, and the Andes, but they’re all gone.) Students find out about and compare the cosmologies, kinship systems, languages, livelihoods, understandings of personhood, histories, ecological relations, and so on, of different peoples in one area of the world. The regional focus, and attention to similarities and differences within an area, as well as with their own society, offers our students an opportunity to garner nuanced insights from the cross-cultural comparison.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

I teach in Latin American Studies and Indigenous Studies that offer courses on Amazonia. This gives a good basis for comparisons and an opportunity to address a diversity within one region. Regional approach also allows a theoretical discussion through ethnographic examples.

Daniela Peluso

At Kent (UK) we require that student register for at least two ethnographic area modules. These tend to be student’s favorite courses because it allows them to learn about a region which means that they can bring together the holistic strands of anthropology such as history, archaeology and geography. This also gives students a taste for anthropology’s comparative approach. Our Human Geography students are also interested in these courses as do students form other part of the University.

Juan A. Echeverri

I teach in a university campus situated in Amazonia (Leticia, Colombia), at the triple border Colombia-Brasil-Peru, where we have an interdisciplinary graduate program with a regional focus (Maestría en Estudios Amazónicos, since 2001, and Doctorado en Estudios Amazónicos, since 2013). So, my position is somewhat different to that of the other colleagues, who offer courses on Amazon ethnography/anthropology abroad. This graduate program has three research lines: natural sciences (mostly ecology), social sciences (anthropology, history, other social/human sciences), and “development” (whatever). The meaning that such a regionally focused course on Amazon anthropology in a university in Amazonia could have is: (1) to give a foundation in regional anthropology for students in the line of social sciences; (2) to establish a trans-disciplinary dialogue with natural, political and other sciences for students of other lines of research; (3) to bring the grand theory and classical anthropological ethnographies down to socio-cultural realities that surround the campus (urbanization of Amazonia, mixed, caboclo, ribereño and bosquesino populations, IIRSA, resguardos indígenas, development policies, etc.); (4) to broaden the notion of the “Amazon region” beyond the borders and provide a pan-Amazonian approach (as we are a national public university is very easy to tend to limit “Amazonas” to the Colombia Amazon).
On the other hand I’ve been offering a course titled “Fundamentos de antropologia” for undergraduate students from Amazonia. It is a course in a “special program” called PEAMA (Programa Especial de Admisión y Movilidad Académica), in which students, inscribed in more than 40 majors (social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, health sciences…) course the two first semesters in Leticia and then continue their careers in the Andean campuses of the University (and later they may return).

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What is the name/title of your course(s) that engage with indigenous lowland South America?

Laura Mentore

ANTH 350: Amazonian Societies

Kathleen Lowrey

Topics in Regional Anthropology: Indigenous South America

Jeremy Campbell

ANTH 430: Amazonia

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

ANTH 239 The Ethnography of Amazonia

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

My courses change yearly. I have been teaching, among others, Socio-cosmologies of Amazonian indigenous peoples, Amazonian Indigenous peoples today, and Biocultural approaches to the Environment and Conservation.

Daniela Peluso

The Anthropology of Amazonia (UG), Lowland South American Anthropology (PG), Research Methods (PG), Anthropology of Business (UG), Relations: global perspectives on family, friendship and care (UG)

Juan A. Echeverri

In the graduate program I’ve offered: Historias y culturas amazónicas (10 times), Vida social en Amazonia (6 times), and Etnografía de los grupos indígenas del Trapecio Amazónico (once), Catedra Imani: Territorio, naturaleza y sociedad (2017-2) and Catedra Imani de lenguas nativas ‘La lengua es espíritu’ (2018-1). For undergraduates (in the PEAMA Program): Fundamentos de antropología (13 times). In the Bogotá Campus, I’ve offered in the anthropology major: Poblaciones amazónicas (5 times). Also in Bogotá for students from all majors: Introducción al contexto amazónico (2 times) and I coordinated the Cátedra nacional Jorge Eliecer Gaitán ‘Amazonia colombiana: imaginarios y realidades’, which had more than one thousand students registered.

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What is the place of this course(s) in the program you teach in? (At what level is it delivered? Is it a program requirement, or an elective?

Laura Mentore

It is an upper level elective in the anthropology program. I teach in a joint department of Sociology and Anthropology, but they are separate majors. Anth 101: Intro to Cultural and Social Anthropology is a prerequisite for taking the course. It is aimed at juniors and seniors in the anthro major, but I often have a few students who are Sociology majors or doing our newly created Latin American Studies minor (which it counts towards). The course is a pre-requisite for Anth 450: Ethnographic Field Methods in Guyana’, the study abroad program I teach with George. His students at UVA also have to take his equivalent to my Anth 350, so they’ve all have an upper level course on Amazonia before travelling with us to Guyana.

Kathleen Lowrey

This is a 200 level (2nd year students) with no prerequisite. So, you get a nice mix of majors and people doing an elective in which they have an interest. Anthropology majors are required to take more than one “Topics in Regional Anthropology” courses, but I am not sure exactly how many.

Jeremy Campbell

It is a “special topics seminar,” meaning that I only teach it on occasion. I hope to offer it every other year, though, and in doing so it will become a permanent part of my course offerings at RWU. It is an advanced (3rd- and 4th-year) seminar for undergraduates majoring in Anthropology & Sociology, though it is also open to advanced students in Latin American and Latino Studies (LALS) and Sustainability Studies. The course is a non-required elective.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

Our program basically requires students to take 40 courses in total, of which 14 must be ANTH courses. Of these, 3 must be ethnographic area courses. We offer at least 4 of these per year. My course is one of these. They are 2nd year courses, with minimal pre-requisites (an Intro to ANTH course, or other social science course). We get on average 25-30 students in each ethnographic area course, because they are also deemed to satisfy social science requirements for other programs. (We have very few majors, and can’t depend on them to populate our classes.)

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

These courses are optional ones for undergraduate and graduate students in Latin American studies and Indigenous Studies.

Daniela Peluso

University programmes in England (it varies throughout the United Kingdom) are typically 3 year programmes divided into 3 stages. The undergraduate course is offered as an optional module in Stages 2 and 3. The postgraduate version is also offered as an optional module. Nonetheless, the Amazonia course is one of our most highly enrolled courses.

Juan A. Echeverri

Historias y culturas amazónicas was an obligatory course for all graduate students, until 2014. We had three obligatory courses for the graduate students: Geografía y ecología de Amazonia, Problemáticas amazónicas e Historias y culturas amazónicas, so that students, independent of their research interest and background, could acquire a broad view of the region in its natural and ecological, political, and historical and anthropological aspects. But the program was reformed and we no longer have obligatory courses (except the research seminars). Vida social en Amazonia and the others graduate courses I mentioned above are elective courses. For undergraduates, Fundamentos de antropología is obligatory for students of anthropology, sociology, social work and a few other majors, and elective for the rest (and many take it).

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What is a good course? (General, blue-sky question…)

Laura Mentore

One that radically expands the students’ sense of reality and possibility, both in terms of their self-perception and perception of the world. One that strikes a balance between concrete knowledge on the one hand, and critical thinking that effectively unravels the concrete on the other. I strive for courses that expand my students’ intellectual and moral frameworks for thinking about what it means to be human, to know, to live a good life, to relate, to exercise agency, while also expanding their inner sense of potential as scholars and agents of change. Sounds like a cliché, I’m sorry.

Kathleen Lowrey

A course in which you learn lots of things you did not know previously in a manner that makes them not only memorable but stimulates you to keep up with relevant emerging discoveries over the years. I really hope my non-major students keep being interested in the latest on South American archaeology, history, politics & indigenous mobilization well into their adult lives: even just at the level of clicking on articles when they pop up in their newsfeed (or whatever direct brain link will serve that purpose in 25 years….).

Jeremy Campbell

One that leaves you suspended between the world and the course material for years on end, posing questions and working through problems.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

Tough question. I think a good course is one in which students experience at least a few times feelings of revelation and of aesthetic pleasure because they have caught on to some key anthropological concept or insight. I recall feeling lucky and exalted as an undergrad when reading about certain cool topics…In my courses, I try to underscore for students just how cool thinking about social life in these or those terms might be… If a course achieves that, it’s a good course. My bias is that it generates the kind of positive association with anthropology that pushes students to take more ANTH courses, to value ANTH, to consider the insights of anthropologists important, and so on… A good course should at some point underscore /remind students of the fact that when it comes to deep understanding of human social lives, you really need to attend to the nitty-gritty of those lives…and that ethnography is really irreplaceable for that. Students should also have to write a few good essays, and they should get good feedback on their writing…

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

One that enhances critical thinking and opens new doors to see the world from different angles. A good course is interactive, involves self-reflection and addresses ethical issues and researcher’s positionality.

Daniela Peluso

One that challenges ethnocentrism. One that relates the topic – no matter how specialised – to global challenges. One that is contemporary, interactive and fully engaging. One that achieves high comfort levels for self-exploration while keeping the bar high.

Juan A. Echeverri

I’d subscribe most of what the other colleagues remarked, and dare to add (or reiterate): one in which not only the students but also the teacher is learning and discovering, one – definitely – that challenges ethnocentrism (just like Daniela says) and opens up the mind to value human diversity, one that promotes critical thinking, and one that inspires the students. [In the undergraduate course I ask the students to write a couple of pages answering the question: “What do you think you’ve learned in this course?” Last semester a student wrote: “¡Profe, después de su curso a uno le dan ganas de ser antropólogo!” – Is it an index of a “good course”?].

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List your course readings

Laura Mentore

See attached syllabus.

Kathleen Lowrey

The attached syllabus is the way I’ve most recently taught it; highlighted texts are things that did not actually work very well and which I will have to swap out. I have used Mary Weismantel’s Cholas and Pishtacos for years and though I liked Canessa’s book and will continue to use parts of it I think I’ll go back to Weismantel which I have consistently found really teachable.

Jeremy Campbell

See attached syllabus.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

See attached syllabus.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

I have used among others:

Conklin, Beth A. 1997. Body paint, feathers, and VCRs: aesthetics and authenticity in Amazonian activism. American Ethnologist 24(4):711–737.
Conklin, Beth A. & Morgan Lynn M. 1996. Babies, Bodies, and the Production of Personhood in North America and a native Amazonian Society. – Ethos 24(4): 657-694.
Graham, Laura R. 2003 [1995]: Performing Dreams. Discourses of Immortality Among the Xavante of Central Brazil. Tucson: Fenestra Books.
Graham Laura R. & H. Glenn Penny 2014: Performing Indigeneity. Global Histories and Contemporary Experiences. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Kopenawa, Davi, and Bruce Albert. 2013. The falling sky: words of a Yanomami shaman. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Lima, Tania Stolze 1999. The Two and Its Many: Reflection on Perspectivism in a Tupi Cosmology. – Ethnos 64(1): 107–131.
Langdon, E. Jean 1992. Introduction: Shamanism and Anthropology. – Matteson Langdon, E. Jean & Gerhard Baer (eds), Portals of Power. Shamanism in South-America, pp. 1–21. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Londoño Sulkin, Carlos D. 2005. Inhuman Beings: Morality and Perspectivism among Muinane People (Colombian Amazon). – Ethnos 70(1): 7–30.
Turner, Terence 1995. Social Body and Embodied Subject: Bodiliness, Subjectivity, and Sociality among the Kayapo. – Cultural Anthropology 10(2): 143-170.
Seeger, Anthony 1987: Why Suyá Sing. A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Vilaça, Aparecida 2005. Chronically Unstable Bodies: Reflection on Amazonian Corporalities. – Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11(3): 445–464.
Virtanen, Pirjo Kristiina 2014. Materializing Alliances: Ayahuasca Shamanism in and beyond Western Amazonian Indigenous Communities. In Amazonian Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond. Beatriz C. Labate and Clancy Cavnar (eds.), pp. 59–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo 2004. Exchanging Perspectives. The Transformation of Objects in to Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies. – Common Knowledge 10(3): 463-484.

Daniela Peluso

I teach lectures and seminars. Please see my syllabus – developed jointly with Miguel Alexiades. There are key readings for both and recommended readings for all. There is also an essay which requires the comparison of two ethnographic texts. The text pairs are:
Pair 1:
Little, Paul. 2001. Amazonia: Territorial Struggles on Perennial Frontiers. London: John Hopkins University Press
Raffles, Hugh 2002. In Amazonia: a natural history. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pair 2:
Harner, Michael J. 1984. The Jívaro: people of the sacred waterfalls. Berkeley: University of California Press
Rubenstein, Steven, 2002. Alejandro Tsakimp: a Shuar healer in the margins of history. Lincoln: London: University of Nebraska Press (Available as an E-Book -Templeman Library catalogue)
Pair 3:
Lizot, Jacques 1985. Tales of the Yanomami: Daily Life in the Venezuelan Forest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Ramos, Alcida Rita 1995. Sanumá memories: Yanomami ethnography in times of crisis. New directions in anthropological writing. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Pair 4:
Conklin, Beth 2001. Consuming Grief: compassionate cannibalism in an Amazonian Society. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Murphy, Yolanda and Murphy, Robert F. [1974] 1985. Women of the Forest. NY: Columbia University Press.
Pair 5:
Brown, Michael F. 2014. Upriver: the turbulent life and times of an Amazonian people. Harvard University Press.
Rubenstein, Steven, 2002. Alejandro Tsakimp: a Shuar healer in the margins of history. Lincoln: London: University of Nebraska Press (Available as an E-Book -Templeman Library catalogue)
Pair 6:
Kopenawa, Davi, and Bruce Albert. 2013. The falling sky: words of a Yanomami shaman. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Lizot, Jacques 1985. Tales of the Yanomami: Daily Life in the Venezuelan Forest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Pair 7:
Kopenawa, Davi, and Bruce Albert. 2013. The falling sky: words of a Yanomami shaman. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Ramos, Alcida Rita 1995. Sanumá memories: Yanomami ethnography in times of crisis. New directions in anthropological writing. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Pair 8:
Londoño Sulkin, Carlos David. 2012. People of substance an ethnography of morality in the Colombian Amazon. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Vilaça, Aparecida. 2010. Strange enemies: indigenous agency and scenes of encounters in Amazonia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Pair 9:
Londoño Sulkin, Carlos David. 2012. People of substance an ethnography of morality in the Colombian Amazon. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Rubenstein, Steven, 2002. Alejandro Tsakimp: a Shuar healer in the margins of history. Lincoln: London: University of Nebraska Press (Available as an E-Book -Templeman Library catalogue)
Pair 10:
Londoño Sulkin, Carlos David. 2012. People of substance an ethnography of morality in the Colombian Amazon. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Santos-Granero, Fernando. 1991. The power of love: the moral use of knowledge amongst the Amuesha of Central Peru. London: Athlone Press.
Pair 11:
Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How forests think: toward an anthropology beyond the human. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1992. From the enemy’s point of view: humanity and divinity in an Amazonian society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
(There is also an additional list of pairs)

Juan A. Echeverri

See attached syllabus.

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List your course films

Laura Mentore

There aren’t any films that I consistently use for the course. I show segments of various documentaries to give a visual for specific topics or to provoke group discussions about how indigenous peoples are depicted in film etc. Recently I have shown clips from ‘Isolated: the Z’oe tribe’ and have the students pay close attention to body language and physical contact (sometimes with the narrative muted), and then have them listen to and critically discuss the narrative (how it frames the viewer’s perceptions and neglects other things that could be significant but go unmentioned). I have shown clips from Chagnon’s “axe fight” as part of a discussion about field methods and to illustrate changes in how anthropologists think about violence and power since the 1960s (namely social evolutionism paradigm vs. Foucaultian approaches). A few times, and always with great ambivalence, I have shown segments from ‘Secrets of the Lost Tribes’, basically to expose students to the nasty underbelly of anthropological debates about research ethics. This sometimes leads to watching segments from the documentary about Kenneth Good and his Yanomami wife’s return to her community (on VHS!), which sparks heated discussions about the ethical boundaries of participation/immersion in fieldwork, how culturally relative “childhood” and “sexuality” really are, etc. I recommend that they watch films on their own time like The Mission and Fitzcaraldo, and discuss them with interested students in office hours, etc. but not as part of the lesson plans. Popular films like Avatar and Apocalypto often serve as references for making certain points about the Western cultural imagination in relation to Amazonia

Kathleen Lowrey

There are so many good ones that I also recommend films students might consider watching on their own time! I use Cocalero, Terry Turner’s Kayapo documentaries, have started to use The Secrets of the Tribe, & do show most of The Motorcycle Diaries in the last week of class when I know students are running out of steam. It obviously privileges the white vs. the indigenous (or any non-white) experience, but the cinematography is gorgeous for students who have not seen any South American landscapes and it makes some points about pan-Americanism and its purchase in South America to which most North American students have never been exposed. Also, the ending makes students cry which is my NUMBER ONE PEDAGOGICAL GOAL ALWAYS. (downside: I might cry too, even after seeing it many times, which is embarrassing)

Jeremy Campbell

I do not list any films on the syllabus, though I do intend on using a few in the course. I may use Guerra’s El Abrazo de la Serpiente in the first section of the course. I will use one of Herzog’s films (probably Fitzcarraldo) in the middle. I will most likely assign many shorter, more journalistic films in the latter portion of the course (many of which I will subtitle myself, as they are in Portuguese or Spanish). In the past, I’ve used Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês, Bye Bye Brasil, Vale dos Esquecidos, Terra do Bem Virá, and others. This time around, I’d really like to focus on the short and impactful readings that I’ve chosen for the syllabus.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

Kayapo. In the past I’ve used others: The Axe Fight, End of the Road, War of the Gods…mostly really old stuff. I don’t feel sophisticated re: film documentaries…Never watched many myself…we didn’t have them in Colombia when I did my undergrad, and maybe tackled a couple during my PhD studies.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

We struggle but we eat fruit (A gente luta mas come fruta, Video nas aldeias production), Aristoteles Barcelos: Apapaatai (on the Waujá), Morgado & de Sena: From São Francisco to Pinheiros (on the Pankararu in São Paulo), Brandenburg and Orzel: When the Two Worlds collide document.

Daniela Peluso

I do not use films in lectures. However, I do use the sounds from the Ax Fight for the first 5 minutes of my lecture on warfare. For one of the course assessments “Critical Film Review’ I assign the Bruce Parry series on the Amazon and require that they write a short essay discussing one episode together with Levi-Strauss’ Tristes Tropques and Mary Louis Pratt’s Imperial Eyes. For their first seminar meeting we watch Amazon Journal. It is really helpful to discuss romantized notions of Amazonia, conservation’s role in projecting indigenous images in a particular way, the new age movement, activism and the media’s role in Amazonian politics. Miguel Alexiades – with who I co-teach this – uses snippets from a documentary featuring Mike Heckenberger and Clark Erickson when he covers Amazonian history.

Juan A. Echeverri

In the graduate courses I don’t use films, but I do in the undergraduate courses. In my latest version of Fundamentos de antropología I used Brian Moser’s War of the Gods, and two non-Amazonian films: Mondo Cane (just for provocation) and Moolaade (an African fiction film on female genital surgery). I’ve also used Herzog’s Fitzcarrald, and one semester I invited the students for a presentation of Ciro Guerra’s El abrazo de la serpiente, screened in a maloca in Leticia (the best critical commentary came from the dueño de maloca – who, by the way, recognized some of the languages spoken and several of the places shown – who said at the end: “¡Yo no entendí nada!”).

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List other course materials

Laura Mentore

In the syllabus I provide a list of links to websites of several relevant organizations and museums. I also incorporate a lot of my own research materials into my teaching. When they read Clastres’ chapter, “The bow and the basket” and G. Mentore’s article on an archery contest, I bring longbows, arrows, and carrying baskets to class and do pretty ridiculous demonstrations, let students (try to) pull the bows, talk about the individual makers of the items, etc. I sometimes share segments from my own video and audio recordings and photos. If I’m working on a relevant article m.s. or conference paper, I might share that with the students and seek their “feedback”, which can be surprisingly helpful.

Kathleen Lowrey

I try to put in a fair amount of music – Calle 13, Wayna Rap, chacareras, the soundtrack to the Mission, tropicalia, Domenico Zipoli – often just have it playing as students come in, which is one of the best uses of the new “smart” classrooms which suck in so many ways compared to the old chalkboard rooms. Some students are accomplished musicians, and all of them are interested in new music, I find; the point is not so much directly pedagogical as to make the course more sensorial and to sort of enlarge their sense of South America as a culturally complex place.

Jeremy Campbell

We utilize a few online databases, like RAISG (for GIS info on land, indigenous territories, parks, etc.; ICMBio and FUNAI have decent online tools too). We also occasionally scan the online news services of Amazonia Real, Amazonia.org, Greenpeace, and the Instituto Socioambiental. All of this is very Brazil-heavy.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

I’m also hoping to take the students (I anticipate a group of 12) to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard to view their South American collections, which are not on public display. They have objects and quite a few remarkable photographs from the Agassiz expeditions of the late 19th Century.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Maps, Ethical guidelines among different Indigenous peoples, UN Conventions…

Daniela Peluso

My syllabus and student Moodle page have links to relevant websites and repositories of current news and films. In my teaching I also include maps, music, ceremonial masks, bullroarers, and a peccary head!

Juan A. Echeverri

Field trips, bringing indigenous peoples to the classroom, and sometimes I bring ritual substances (coca, tobacco, cahuana: non-alcoholic starch drink).

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How / why did you come to choose the particular set of readings/films/other materials you assigned for this course?

Laura Mentore

For the past 2 semesters, I have started the course by reading out loud several passages from Todorov’s account of the way Columbus encountered the people and environments of the New World, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. What Todorov so brilliantly demonstrates is that for Columbus, the living people and landscapes he encountered were nothing more than proof or referents for a “reality” he was already convinced that he knew from the outset of the journey—their meanings were already established via his religious beliefs and “references” like Marco Polo’s writings and Greek mythology. I use this as a point of departure into a major recurring theme in the course: that to think about “Amazonia” anthropologically must entail thinking at the same time about the historical and current role of the Western cultural imaginary in objectifying and shaping it as such. The idea is to make it clear right from the start that Amazonia isn’t a “separate and distinct” region or an alien set of cultures, but in fact, a powerful and integral part of our own social history, worldview, desires, and a necessary counterpoint to our notion of modernity. I elaborate on this with articles like Kirsh’s “Lost Tribes: Indigenous Peoples and the social Imaginary”, and often Conklin and Graham’s piece, “The Shifting Middle Ground…”. This sets the tone for a recurring emphasis on semiotics in the course (Carlos!) —namely the question of how certain representations of Amazonian peoples and environments are produced, and how they are then interpreted, and by whom and through what exercises in power. This past semester, I established a nice arc from Columbus’s representational schema, in which indigenous peoples don’t even have voices of their own (he swears they are speaking an old dialect of Spanish and can understand them and knows exactly what they’re referring to), to our various anthropological attempts at interpreting indigenous cultural representations, to Davi Kopenawa’s own narrative account through the concessionary representational medium of white people’s “paper skins”. The first full ethnography they read is Clastres’s Chronicle of the Guayaki. The theme of the EuroAmerican imaginary is retained as we reflect on Clastres’s underlying expectations and assumptions about the Guayaki and how these are influenced by his training as a French/Levi-Straussian structuralist. I also use Clastres to start teaching symbolic analysis as well. The next segment of readings is basically the Overing school, which exposes students to several main critiques of structuralism, namely its static approach to society vs. the emergent notion of sociality, its reliance on dualisms arguably not native to indigenous social theories (mind/body; reason/emotion; nature/culture). Here students are taught about phenomenological and humanistic anthropologies , approaches that take them further into Amazonian philosophies of being. Next we move onto a unit on economic themes and debates in Amazonia, mainly via Hugh-Jones’s article and McCallum’s Gender and Sociality. McCallum’s book is used to give a more thorough teaching of kinship and gender debates, but also as a study in how multiple paradigms can be combined, and the mixed results this can yield (Marxian analysis meets feminist anthro and elements of Overing’s work, with a sprinkling of Melanesian influence). Then comes perspectivism/multinaturalism (every semester I wrestle with where is best to position this section, and either way students say they wish they had it at the opposite point in the semester—either sooner or later, depending on where I placed it…). When I put it at the beginning, they say they didn’t have enough background knowledge to understand it. When I put it at the end, they see how it relates to everyone they read before and wish they “had it” sooner. (ugh!) For the final section of the course I purposefully assign readings that I haven’t read before to help me stay current, so these change every time. Last semester we spent most of this time on How Forests Think and The Falling Sky—the latter of which will probably become a staple. So- main reasons for my course format are (1) the arc it provides in going from the extreme of western over-determination of the meaning of all peoples and things throughout the New World to the opposite extreme of reverse anthropology by a single Yanomami shaman, and (2) the movement it provides through several general paradigms—structuralism, phenomenology, symbolic anthro, Marxian/economic anthro, humanistic anthro, perspectivism, reverse anthro, all while grounded in rich ethnographies

Kathleen Lowrey

Since it is supposed to be all of indigenous South America, I try to spend a lot of time on the Andes where most indigenous South Americans live. This is nice for me, as I might not otherwise pay as much attention to that literature since I work in lowland South America. Otherwise I guess my approach is semi-chronological, and about two things at once: indigenous South America itself through time and then anthropological scholarship on South America over time.

Jeremy Campbell

I have taught “Amazonia” four times, and each time I have done it in a slightly different fashion. The second and third iterations were done in situ as part of a study abroad course I conducted in Pará, Brazil. These offerings were necessarily different from the courses conducted in North American classrooms. In the course I’ve designed for Fall 2016, I’ve structured the course around three main ideas: 1) exploring indigenous worldviews (ontologies); 2) historicizing Amazonia as part of the world system, from contact through the present; 3) understanding conflicts over land and resources through the lenses of comparative ethnography and political ecology. Each class session is based on the discussion of a focused reading—most of the time only one chapter or article on a given topic. There are threads that weave through all three sections of the course, but the course is not designed around classic tomes or canonical themes.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

Note that we have a 13-week teaching semester, not including the Final Exam period. I’ve put in italics above, interspersed among the elements in my list of course readings, a blurb on each one. This helps answer this question. I usually like to begin with a reading that addresses the ecology of the rainforest, and how humans fit into it. This time I used Erickson; in the past I’ve used Descola or Roosevelt for these purposes. Most of the readings as of that point address understandings of personhood (with much attention to bodies, child-raising, death), cosmology (with attention to perspectivism and animism), social org and kinship, gender, and history. I will also have a reading or two about the entailments of indigenous engagement with the nation-state and colonial outsiders (e.g., stuff about land titles, conservation NGOs…) I have varied my readings a lot over the years. I used to have students read discussions concerning different analytical approaches or ‘schools of Americanism’, but I didn’t do that this time.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

My own previous readings and interest…

Daniela Peluso

Through my own appreciation for them. Because they best compliment a topic I wish to cover. And importantly, because they inspire discussion among the students.

Juan A. Echeverri

My strategy is different for the graduate and undergraduate courses. In the graduate course I established two main parts: (1) culture and nature, which begins with an overview of Amazon archaeology, and focuses on forest management and environmental knowledge (hunter-gatherers, palms, horticulture); this part is meant to establish connections and counterpoints with natural sciences; (2) Society and history, with two sections: Amazon sociality (I rely heavily on Overing, etc.) and myth and history. I do not seek a comprehensive approach, but a selection of subjects and readings that allow the students to understand and critically evaluate some central debates in Amazon ethnography.
In the undergraduate course, my approach is quite different. Initially I offered the course modeled as a graduate seminar, but soon I found that it didn’t work for the students (very young and educated in Amazonian bachilleratos), who hardly read (and not at all in English); also, I became aware that lecturing was a waste of time. I modeled the course around “activities”, covering more or less the four fields of anthropology (with greater emphasis on socio-cultural anthropology). The readings are from all over the world, and not necessarily Amazonian. This is a case, where the students are “amazónicos” (although not necessarily indigenous), and coming from different Departamentos of the Colombian Amazon (Putumayo, Amazonas, Vaupés, Guainía). The course allows for a lot of spontaneous dialogue, and they exchange experiences from their own regions and backgrounds.

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Does your course seek to teach a canon, and revisit classics/ foundational documents? Which ones? Does your course focus instead on new trends? Does it seek a balance between ‘cool’ and ‘canon’, and if so, how do you calibrate this? How do colleagues keep up to date?

Laura Mentore

Several canons are covered, as outlined above, but not in as much depth as the actual theory course required for our majors. Most students take this course after theory, so for them it’s a refresher/extension of that content plus getting it grounded in specific ethnographic contexts. Clastres is usually the oldest publication I use, though his book allows me to get across some Levi-Strauss, C. Crocker, and others in lecture. I suppose I try to counter-balance the rigors of learning how to think about ritual like a structuralist /agriculture like a Marxian feminist with indulgences in personal anecdotes, bizarre stories, and cool stuff from my fieldwork. Not sure if that’s calibrated.

Kathleen Lowrey

I do try to track how scholarship has changed with time (from being sort of “natural historical” to more historical and political, and formerly all North American / European where now South American scholars are famous anthropologists, too, and the next step is likely to be indigenous South Americans becoming scholarly authorities). But I try not to take gratuitous kicks at the old stuff: to go way back, Hans Staden is tremendously informative and entertaining, and the Handbook is less politically correct but far more interesting (and deeply informative) than the Cambridge History; and somebody like Guaman Poma existed early on.

Jeremy Campbell

No, there’s very little canon here. I’ve tried to be instrumental in constructing the reading list: the three sections explore the themes listed above, which in effect are “problems” that the readings are marshalled to solve or further problematize. Now, some of the greats of Amazonian anthropology are in the syllabus, but it’s not the result of any calibration of classic and contemporary. The balance is definitely tilted towards work completed since 1995, and (due to my audience) research published originally in English.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

I don’t teach a canon, though I do discuss it in class. So no Lévi-Strauss, no Clastres. I do find it a must to have students read Viveiros de Castro’s 1998 article on perspectivism.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

I try to do both, cool and canon…

Daniela Peluso

Both – and not chronologically. I use many old texts and also engage in old debates: warfare; protein theory, game theory, myth of matriarchy….. New trends: indigenous urbanisation; development challenges, massacres, federation politics. I keep up to date through fieldwork, colleagues, conferences, the internet and, of course, reading.

Juan A. Echeverri

In the graduate course, perhaps the only classics are in archaeology (Lathrap, Roosevelt), and in forest management (Descola). In the aspects of sociality and history, I do use Viveiros. In the undergraduate course, everything is “cool”.

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Does your course privilege one or two deep ethnographic texts, or does it go for a wider range of shorter documents? Does your course have students read about lots of groups, or else in greater depth about fewer groups)?

Laura Mentore

Last semester, the only book we read in its entirety was Chronicle of the Guayaki. We read about half of the Overing/Passes volume, 2/3 of The Falling Sky, 2/3 of Gender and Sociality, and only 3 chapters from How Forests Think. The rest is articles, so its maybe 60/40 between books and articles.

Kathleen Lowrey

We only read one ethnography, always something Andean: Weismantel is my go-to, but Canessa’s recent monograph worked pretty well; once I taught June Nash’s We eat the mines and the mines eat us which actually went well except there was a lot of inside baseball about mid-century Bolivian politics which was heavy going.

Jeremy Campbell

I teach 30 discrete articles/chapters/excerpts in this class, and no books in their entirety. This is in part because I want to cover a lot of ground, but also because I’m dealing with the ever-shortening attention span of the North American university student. It is possible to achieve great results with full texts, but I’d likely be limited to just three. The one-article-per-class-session model that I have here keeps students focused and moving through the material. They must keep and submit a digitally-based reading log for every class/reading, too. We do read about a lot of different groups—ten or so indigenous nations, plus quite a bit about so-called “caboclos,” “colonos,” quilombolas, and ecologists. We read about and discuss the Munduruku in all three sections of the class, which provides a bit of depth and continuity.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

I’ve done both. This time, I had a smattering of articles, and then split the class and had half read one monograph, and half read another.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Unfortunately, I don’t use any books as there is no time for that. Most articles/ chapters have deep ethnographic stuff included.

Daniela Peluso

Both again. The final essay – which they read and write for on their own time must make links between two ethnographies. Their first essay is a critical analysis of a film. In the lectures and seminars we focus on specific readings. The module is broad. Miguel Alexiades would like restructuring our syllabus by focusing on one or two groups such as the Yanomamo and/or the Kayapo.

Juan A. Echeverri

In both graduate and undergraduate courses, I use a wide arrange of articles or book chapters. Only in “Vida social en Amazonia” (an elective graduate course) I devote the course to the reading of three ethnographies.

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Does your course seek to achieve an overview of ‘cultural areas’ or something comparable? (E.g., by linguistic families, or subsection of the Amazon, or by nation-state?)

Laura Mentore

No, I have pretty much decided students don’t find that kind of approach as interesting or relevant—though I do provide basic bearings on the various groups we read about, eg where they’re located on the map and the main scholars who’ve worked with them, etc. My course is pitched at more of a philosophical level, focused on native philosophies of space, time, morality, power, the environment, etc. and their points of tension, overlap and divergence with Western philosophies. I am aware of the risk this entails in terms of over-generalizing and losing sight of the specificities of various Amazonian “groups” and the particularities of their histories and languages, but at the same time, I see the group-centric model of Amazonia as a legacy of a pseudo-scientific ethnological emphasis on typologies that I don’t especially like. That said, my teaching is inevitably slanted towards what I’m most familiar with—the Guianas and its Carib and Arawakan societies. Students hear a lot about Guyana and its unique social history as a British colony in comparison to neighbors Brazil and Venezuela, and of course, a whole lot about the Waiwai, Makushi and Wapishana. When I’ve had students write their senior thesis on Amazonia (eg those who do the Guyana program and want to write about their research), I do pull out the maps and set them straight on these basics.

Kathleen Lowrey

It’s a 200 level course so I want them to learn some basic stuff. They have to label a political map of South America and have some historical sense of why the borders are where they are; they should know what the geographical / cultural areas are and how indigenous concerns are similar and different in each; they should know that indigenous peoples are not “dying out” even in the Amazon (something that they still often believe) and not AT ALL in the millions-strong Andes; that millions of people speak Andean indigenous languages and hundreds of thousands speak Guaraní…. Like this is not a story of sad bunnies, though there is a lot of injustice and poverty to cover.

Jeremy Campbell

No, I make no effort to systematically cover the range of cultural diversity in the region. I introduce it, talk about it, demonstrate some things on maps and timelines, but it isn’t crucial that students be able to think in terms of linguistic families or cultural areas. Furthermore, my own training and research biases lead me to do a much better job covering the Brazilian Amazon, especially in terms of history, politics, and political ecology.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

Not really. I wasn’t trained to attend carefully to whether people were Arawaks, Tukanoan, Tupi, Ge, or whatnot, and so I don’t stress that in my courses. I do try to get them to see that there are diverse traditional forms of social organization, e.g., the old dispersed settlement pattern in Peru among Asheninka, Yine, and the like, and then the villages of the Kayapo, and the clan and lineage settlements of the North West Amazon. (Of course, I also address Comunidades Nativas and settlements with new forms.) I also try to make sure they read about people in different nation-states.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Haven’t done that yet. Maybe too “narrow” have not been offered because of limited financial resources for in-class teaching..

Daniela Peluso

No, but we do cover what these are in the first two sessions, i.e the different river basins, western amazonia, histories of language families and migration, pre-colmbian lowland south America, etc. This is why this module is also important for human geography.

Juan A. Echeverri

I aim that the students get a global sense of Amazonia in terms of main cultural areas, linguistic families, and also biogeography and natural landscapes, but we do not approach it in a systematic manner, but rather pointed at from the readings we do. I do love to project maps and show for instance, how you can delimit culture areas looking at the use of different plants, of linguistic families that meet in Leticia and provide contrasts and examples right at hand. I do emphasize the ethnographic areas I’m most familiar with, of course. [One anecdote: once, I was in a Seminar on kinship, and we discussed Dravidian systems. One shaman friend arrived to the classroom (he needed some money), and I took the opportunity to ask him: “Don Miguel, usted me contó una vez de un “tío” que lo curó de una terrible enfermedad; ¿quién era exactamente ese tío?” He answered: “Era el papá de mi esposa”. “¿Pero ése no es entonces su suegro?” “Suegro, tío, eso es lo mismo”, in a perfect Dravidian logic.]

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Does your course seek to address a broad set of basic anthropological topics (social org, gender, cosmology, religion, ritual, politics, language, history, livelihood, or others you might consider basic)? Or does it have a more pointed focus?

Laura Mentore

It covers the genres of anthropological thought outlined above, and has an underlying emphasis on the politics of representation and interpretation, and the role of the Western imaginary in shaping Amazonia (from Columbus to NGOs). On the broadest level, the course is an advanced introduction to non-western, indigenous philosophy.

Kathleen Lowrey

Boy. No. I do think the ethnography does some of this theoretical heavy lifting (Weismantel, Canessa, or Nash) so I don’t have to, but I definitely have not thought about organizing the course around concepts in this way. I will be interested to see if others do – if you get it right, it must be awesome. I don’t do this, though, I must admit.

Jeremy Campbell

No, the course integrates the topics mentioned into the study of the three “problems” of indigenous ontologies; Amazonia in the world system; and political ecological entanglements. As such, we use anthropology (the focused examination of all the sociocultural components mentioned at the left, and more) to reveal broader dilemmas about cultural contact, change over time, and most importantly, power dynamics. This approach creates a common conversation for interdisciplinary concerns (like Sustainability Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies), rather than exploring, say, gender in a deeply comparative vein.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

Yes, I try to address all these. I think my preference is for attention to cosmology and personhood, but I am good at making sure this is linked to social organization and livelihood. I always invest a bit in making sure there’s recognition of histories of contact, and of the fact that peoples in the Amazon have changed themselves because of their relations with outsiders. When I talk to Jeremy Campbell, I feel guilty that I don’t address more deeply the political economic context of the nation-state, nor the lives of caboclos!

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Yes, for instance my course on Amazonian socio-cosmologies. I have also been teaching on rituals and decolonizing methods in which I have used my own examples from the Amazon (course titles Contemporary Rituals in Latin America, Decolonizing methods and epistemic differences.

Daniela Peluso

Yes, it covers all of these in an integrated way – meaning that they relate to other topics/points. Yet, each of these ‘topics’ is an opportunity to also teach broader anthropological literature vis-à-vis how the lowland South American literature has contributed t it.

Juan A. Echeverri

In the graduate course I focus on two broad themes: Culture and Nature, and Society and History. From the particular ethnographic examples we choose, we point to those more general issues. The undergraduate course is loosely modeled on broad themes (biological anthropology, the concept of culture, cultural relativism, kinship, religion…).

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What current trends are there? What is the next big thing?

Laura Mentore

Current trend—debunking the ontological turn and coming up with more grounded ways of talking about interspecies relationality? And relatedly, reminding ourselves of why ethnography still matters. A lot. Next big thing: my own work, of course [I’m joking. sort of ☺]

Kathleen Lowrey

I agree with Carlos about emotions / affect being “big” around now; after all of the brain-focused ontology stuff, a bit of heart, hooray ☺

Jeremy Campbell

I’m a big fan of trying to blend approaches. The course represents an (incomplete, halting) blend of the literatures on ontology and difference with the literatures on power, economics, and politics. I suspect both the alterity stuff and the political ecology stuff will persist in ethnographic studies of Amazonia, and will continue to largely talk past one another.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

Not sure at all. I do know I missed the ontological turn. I don’t know why, but I didn’t read at all about it between 2004 and 2014! Recently I found out it had been a big deal, but I read a few papers and simply didn’t feel titillated by it all. I still really find the perspectival stuff important, but only when carefully tempered by attention to history. I’ll note that I work on the topic of morality, which ‘burgeoned’ (this term comes up all the time when talking about morality as a topic in anthropology…have you noticed that?) over the last couple of decades. I am glad to see it’s gotten some attention among Amazonianist, but am surprised that anthropologists of the region aren’t more pointedly engaging with recent discussions by Laidlaw, Robbins, Lambek, Keane, etc. Maybe that’s next. I noted Walker’s recent monograph begins to do that.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Evidence and critical ecology have been discussed quite a lot… Though I don’t think they will be the next ‘turns’

Daniela Peluso

Human-animal (interspecies) relations, the anthropocene, climate change, and the anthropology of ‘care’

Juan A. Echeverri

Trans-disciplinarity, meaning by this that the problems and questions we approach are not those posed by disciplines (anthropology or otherwise) but by the “real world” (whatever it may mean). And the big thing next should be something like trans-culturality, i.e. to incorporate and communicate conceptual tools and categories from academy to local knowledge: from ethnography to ontography.

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Does your course have an ‘activist’ bent? How so?

Laura Mentore

Interestingly, no, not as much as some of my other courses like Anthro of Food and Environment and Development Narratives. We talk a lot about the various schemes and projects aimed at “improving things” in contemporary Amazonia from ecotourism to land rights movements, but really I’ve ended up treating this as one of my most philosophically oriented and least hands-on courses. This is partly because I want to complicate their way of thinking about power, change, and agency (and by extension, “activism”) by exposing them to the depth and robustness of indigenous ideas about what it means to be human, gendered, to live in a rainforest environment, to be beautiful/ugly, happy/discontent, and so forth. Overall I think that is probably the most distinctive thing that anthropology can contribute to social activism—a more substantive sense of what human diversity and cross cultural perspective really means and how this should influence our approach to change and our assumptions about what is or isn’t an “improvement”. Other courses get into more hands on applications of those ideas.

Kathleen Lowrey

Something I emphasize a lot, teaching in North America and Canada in particular, are commonalities and differences in indigenous experience / history / politics; I think South American scholars (and people generally) think a lot more about North America than the reverse and I try to correct that a bit in my classroom. There is also – in Canada – a kind of funny combination of self-flagellation and smugness around indigenous issues (it was SO bad but we are SO aware now) in the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and students often assume that South America must be “worse” because it is, doncha know, 3rd world and stuff. That the Black Legend about Spanish vs. British colonialism is a big fat lie, that anti-colonial movements are global movements that started outside North America, not in it…. These are new ideas for a lot of them.

Jeremy Campbell

The final third of the class explores ongoing debates and struggles over land, natural resources, and power dynamics in Amazonia. My own politics necessarily seeps into this work, and in fact I teach my own research (in which I am working with Munduruku activists on land-claims disputes). The students also must focus on a “contemporary aspect of Amazonian political ecology” for their final, cumulative research project. When appropriate, I place students in touch with NGOs and regional experts to facilitate their student projects, which greatly enhances their experience. However, this is typically a one-way street, with activists and professionals aiding my class but not the other way around.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

No. I do bring up issues faced by indigenous Amazonian peoples.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

I have tried to encourage students to look critically at Western academia: its whiteness, maleness, and Euro-American emphasis. We do also talk about current issues, such as dam constructions, territorial demarcation claims faced by the local populations etc.

Daniela Peluso

Yes, I always try to invite one guest speaker who is involved with activist work. I usually rely on the Forest Peoples’ Programme for speakers. Apart from that, I encourage informed activism and sometimes assign activist-bent project in my seminars.

Juan A. Echeverri

It is inherent. I do not mean necessarily human rights advocacy, protests against multinational, extractive projects, IIRSA, dams, etc. A course about Amazonia – in Amazonia – needs to be politically situated. I state at the very beginning of the syllabus: “Este curso presenta la posición política y científica de la línea de investigación en Historias y Culturas Amazónicas en relación a la producción de conocimiento histórico y social sobre las poblaciones nativas de la cuenca amazónica”. By saying “political and scientific” I mean that we should question ourselves why we do science (or anthropology) in the first place. “What’s the use of doing anthropology/ethnography in Amazonia right now?”, I ask the students, “Is it to publish articles in English in US or European journals, seconding intellectual trends from abroad? No problem with that, but before that, our questions, our concepts (and they can come from colleagues abroad or from native thought or from wherever) should first of all serve the political purporse of helping “us” (who?) develop intelligence to understand intercultural relations, public policies, development projects… Something like that.

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Does your course have some collaborative aspects with indigenous communities?

Laura Mentore

Not directly- though this course is the prerequisite for my field methods course. And that is an entirely collaborative undertaking. I have thought about trying to connect with the Waiwai and Makushi on skype during class time, but it hasn’t happened yet and I don’t yet have a clear enough sense of what I would want both parties to gain from such an exercise. Would like to discuss this with others.

Kathleen Lowrey

No, not at all. However, one sort of steady presence in the enrolment over the years has been Canadian Aboriginal students who are interested in exactly the kinds of information I hope the course provides and who of course are well able to make the point about this not being a story of poor oppressed Indians someplace else.

Jeremy Campbell

Not explicitly, no, though I do teach some letters and other publications from Munduruku activists with whom I’ve worked (and which I translated). Connecting with these folks would be possible via FaceTime, Skype, etc., but technology and translation can be difficult issues to overcome in an undergraduate seminar.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

No….

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Not yet, but I hope one day I will do that. Video conferencing could be much more used.

Daniela Peluso

No.

Juan A. Echeverri

Great question. For us here it is a central issue and not easy to tackle. I think about the issue of “collaboration” in three senses, which I present from the most obvious to the most difficult: (1) collaboration in the research process – a little like Laura says above (field methods as a collaborative process); ethnography not as an extractive industry but as an ethical and political process [one anecdote: a biologist, a colleague in the university, hired a Witoto friend – a woman – to help him in a project about cultivated plants, and he told her that she would be hired not as “informant” but as “co-researcher” (very politically correct); this woman answered him: “No, you are the researcher; I’m no researcher, I am the one who knows!”]. (2) Collaboration with the advanced formation of indigenous individuals; that is, indigenous students in the graduate program. Our Master’s program was created in 2001, and only in 2012 we granted a Master’s degree to one Tikuna man (native speaker, member of a resguardo – I was his thesis supervisor); it was quite a challenge; now, we have a Witoto woman and a Tikuna man in the Ph.D. program, and another 4 indigenous persons in the Master’s program. We have, a few others who have begun and not concluded the Master. A have a few interesting thoughts and ideas about this, which I will share in our discussion in Lima. (3) The most difficult and challenging: collaboration as Intelligenz: not as informants or co-researchers, not as students, but as brainpower.

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Is your course interdisciplinary? How so?

Laura Mentore

My course is unapologetically anthropological but it does count towards the Latin American Studies minor, and Sociology majors can take it as credit towards the Soc major.

Kathleen Lowrey

Not really, I don’t think.

Jeremy Campbell

Yes, the course is interdisciplinary in terms of its learning outcomes. While most of the material is anthropological (though there is work by historians and ecologists mixed in too), the course is oriented towards goals that transcend classic anthropological concerns. Students from two interdisciplinary programs at RWU (Latin American and Latino Studies and Sustainability Studies) are able to take “Amazonia” for elective credit within these programs.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

No…

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Yes, in a way that sometimes I invite linguistics, archaeologists, or people from bio-sciences to my course.

Daniela Peluso

Yes, I integrate some geography, archeology, linguistics, history and philosophy.

Juan A. Echeverri

“Interdisciplinary” is one of those words, like “sustainable development”, that we use so much that end up meaning nothing – or meaning whatever. Our graduate program is proclaimed as Interdisciplinary, but I believe that in practice it is simply multi-disciplinary, with a potential for trans-disciplinarity. The syllabus I present is not interdisciplinary in its contents, it is interdisciplinary in its audience and outcomes, because it’s meant for students from several disciplines (not only for anthropologists) and invites interdisciplinary dialogue.

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What are your pedagogical styles and preferences when teaching your course? Do you mainly lecture? What kinds of exercises do you do in class? Set up games? Have students do group work?

Laura Mentore

I typically lecture 50-60% of the class time, explaining main concepts, giving necessary context and background to help students situate the authors’ arguments, and provide case examples from my research. The rest of class time is very much Socratic method of fostering critical thinking and debate skills. For the more difficult readings, I give them questions and they work through them in small groups of 4-5. A lot of it depends on the class dynamic. If there are several non-majors with less of a knowledge base in anthropology, I spend more time lecturing. If it’s mainly seniors and they’re really enthused, we have more discussion. Lots of material culture is in the classroom. Often, I will have a graded component where each student is responsible for leading the discussion for one class—giving their best overview, sharing critiques, and raising questions for their peers.

Kathleen Lowrey

I mainly lecture.

Jeremy Campbell

I typically lecture for 60-70% of class time, though my lecture style is very informal and is predicated on asking questions of the students and eliciting their responses to both the course readings and any additional material I may be introducing in class. I also utilize in-class writing exercises, discussion in small groups, and occasional outings (walk & talk with a partner, class outside, class at a museum, etc.).

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

I’m really old-style about this…I learned to lecture from Joanna Overing and from Don Kulick, and basically what I do is unpack texts. Students know beforehand what they have to read; in recent years, I’ve invested more in giving them ample time to read, rather than having them cram…then I go over documents very carefully. In order not to let it me my voice droning on and on, I do keep asking students questions during my lectures, asking them to make linkages with other readings and so on. In 2016 I tried the exercise of splitting the class into groups of four to six students. In each group, half would read my monograph, half would read Harry Walker’s. (I chose it because I had agreed to review it for Ethos.) I gave them a schedule that stated which chapters they had to read for which days, and questions regarding each chapter; group members were supposed to ensure that everybody in their group who was reading the OTHER monograph knew what the monograph they were not reading was about. It worked ok with committed groups, but some groups had problems with students who didn’t do the readings.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

I do teaching, but also a lot article/chapter readings when we also have discussion in small groups. After these group discussions we come together has share our thoughts and pin-point the main issues. I try to make students to understand that we do construct knowledge in interactions and collectively. Sometimes we also visit some places (For instance we visited a lecture on Global Challenges in the Institute for Foreign Affairs for instance in order to see how indigenous people’s view was included in their talks).

Daniela Peluso

Students have one lecture and one seminar per week. The lectures are mostly multi-media and two sessions are based on ‘experiential learning’ – the students appreciate this. I have also created two games for the seminars but do not always use them. I provoke curiosity form the start and this means that students tend to be well prepared and so they prefer to converse in seminars.

Juan A. Echeverri

In the graduate course, we have weekly sessions (4 hours each). For each session, there are readings assigned to specific students. I lecture, perhaps, from half an hour to one hour introducing the subject; then the assigned students present their readings, and I add comments, remarks, etc. Its success depends on everybody doing the readings. We have also had 2-3 day field trips to a community (all this requires a lot of preparation and arrangements); students are assigned different research topics (health, education, political organization, economy, etc.); we set up a wiki page and write a collaborative monograph on the community .
In the undergraduate course I lecture little, but converse and interact informally a lot, and have the students work by themselves, in groups, constantly.

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How are students assessed?

Laura Mentore

30% attendance, participation, and leading a discussion. 40% two (2,000 word) essays. 30% cumulative, closed-book written exam

Kathleen Lowrey

Something I love about this course is that because it is full of facts facts facts it is actually possible to design meaningful multiple-choice exams that reinforce learning. I use the services on campus that give you really good quantitative feedback on well-designed questions and think over the years I actually have developed good exam instruments. There is also a bit of written work, but unlike all of my other courses I don’t rely principally on essays or presentations just old-fashioned lectures and tests. Students seem to find it a refreshing change, honestly – this approach in social science courses has become rather unusual, I think.

Jeremy Campbell

40% of a student’s grade is based on participation: attendance, active discussion, and the reading logs. The high value placed here ensures that students “show up” to do the work. A midterm examination (take-home essays) is worth 25% of the course grade, and the final 35% is for an original research project in which individuals (or groups) choose a contemporary political ecological dilemma in Amazonia (dams, roads, land disputes, pollution, debates about identity) and explore it through a range of tasks, multimedia presentations, etc. See the syllabus for more details.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

My original preference was to have an early quiz on cultural ecology, geography, and stuff that I wanted to get through quickly, and then either two essays and a sit-in final exam, or three essays. Now I’ll have an early quiz or exam, a couple of mid-term essays, and a group work/class presentation grade. (I’ve never liked the latter very much.)

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Active participation during the lectures and in discussion in small groups + final essay or exam.

Daniela Peluso

Seminar Participation 15% (I use a formula). Critical Film Review 20% . Class Test 20% (multiple choice, T/F, short answer questions and 1 ranking question). Essay 50% (comparing ethnographies by linking them to key course themes).

Juan A. Echeverri

I’m very explicit in my evaluation criteria. In the graduate course is: written critical reviews of readings (20%), oral presentations in class (15%), and the rest a final essay, split in three: 10% for the initial proposal of the essay, 15% for the first draft, and 40% for the last draft.
In the undergraduate course, I combine qualitative assessments (which do not count for the final grade), and qualitative and quantitative assessments (which count for the final grade, but the students only know the qualitative component: Muy bien, Bien, Aceptable, Regular, Deficiente, Insuficiente). Sometimes, this bewilders them, because they want to know what their grades are (some kind of number). Each qualitative label represents a quantitative range (e.g. “Bien” means something between 3.6-4.2 (in a scale from 0-5). If a student gets a final grade in the range “Bien” I give her the top grade: 4.2. It means that the final grades will be, either 4.8, 4.2, 3.5, 2.8… Besides this, I write to each student a qualitative assessment of her progress (a very personal and candid assessment, telling them how I see them, encouraging them, appreciating their qualities, etc.) in the middle and at the end of the term. I’ve learned that it has a very important effect on them, because few teachers bother to write things to students, beyond giving grades…

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 What is the average grade in your course?

Laura Mentore

Usually a B-/B. Last semester was an outstanding group and it was closer to a B+ with several A’s and A-‘s

Kathleen Lowrey

B / B-

Jeremy Campbell

The last time I taught this course, the average mark earned was a B+. I find that, even though hardly any student has prior knowledge of the region, students respond favorably to the rigors of the course. They tend to put more effort into it as a result, and several reported that the class was—shockingly enough, to them—among their favorites taken as an undergraduate.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

69%

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

4 (In Europe we have grades from 1—5, 5 being the best)

Daniela Peluso

B to B+

Juan A. Echeverri

4.2 (in a range from 0-5). (For me, more important than grades is the narrative feedback I give them.)

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If you have taught this course more than one or two times, how have you changed it, and why?

Laura Mentore

The course gets revised and refined each time I teach it (which is about once every 3 semesters). I always add a new section of readings at the end to help me stay current. The format I outlined above is the result of teaching it a number of times and really thinking about how the course can contribute something distinctive and needed in our overall curriculum. It’s the regionally-based course in my department. Over time I’ve scaled back the amount of reading—opting for students to have less to read and actually read it, as opposed to giving them what I think is an appropriate amount and being frustrated to find they haven’t read it.

Kathleen Lowrey

I am always tinkering with it though I find the arc is the same, I always use Hans Staden, Guaman Poma, the Handbook to start and always the ethnography as the heart of it. Politics have changed so much over the years (the pink tide being turned back, Evo in political hot water) that those later bits always have to be updated / modified. And you want to keep up with scholarship over the years.

Jeremy Campbell

The course is constantly evolving. I like the article-based model of the most recent iteration, as I find it allows the students to cover a lot of ground.

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

The readings I select have made a big difference to the course. I used to use the Overing and Passes “The Anthropology of Love and Anger” book as the main textbook. (Pete Gow’s essay in that one is one of my favorite articles in Amazonianist anthropology.) I’d actually be ok with that even now. I’ve reduced the proportion of course material that is tied to my school (Joanna Overing and her students)…but it’s still a big component of my course. For a while, I scaffolded an important part of the course on V. de C.’s discussion of analytical approaches to Amazonia… I don’t do that anymore.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Two times.

Daniela Peluso

I teach it every other year – so this Spring will be the 5th time! We change the readings and we always change the theme for the last session to talk about whatever the most current looming issues are.

Juan A. Echeverri

“Historias y culturas amazónicas” has been offered 10 times, and it has had many different versions, mainly because on several occasions it has been offered jointly with other colleagues (a couple of times with a historian, and once with one historian and another anthropologist), but I’m not very happy with this, because we do not really work together, but split the seminar in chunks. .My materials have been more or less the same but I keep thinking of any new stuff to add.
The undergraduate course “Fundamentos de antropología” I have offered many times. The first four times I kept changing the program every time and I was very dissatisfied. I finally came up with a thematic structure and a pedagogical structure, which I found satisfactory and I have kept more or less stable.

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Do you use Amazonian examples/insights/ethnographies in courses that are not specifically focused on indigenous South American topics?

Laura Mentore

Examples and insights: all the time, probably every single class. Amazonian lit and my own research are constant sources of other cultural perspectives and practices that challenge my students to be less ethnocentric and reductionist in their way of looking at things. I have taught The Headman and I in an honors level section of Intro to Anthropology and another time used McCallum’s Gender and Sociality; I have taught Spears of Twilight in our Ethnography course (a co-requisite taught in conjunction with the Theory course). Always at least a couple Amazonian articles in my courses on food, economics, medical anthro, and environmental anthro.

Kathleen Lowrey

I love the Kayapo documentaries; and the new archaeological findings about Amazonian complexity are such a poke in the eye to social evolutionist ideas about band/tribe/chiefdom/ state and the Progress of Man that they work well in all kinds of contexts. I also love teaching about the khipu – so fascinating and can make so many different kinds of points about cultural logics and cultural difference. That’s not Amazonian, of course.

Jeremy Campbell

Yes. I use readings or films that relate “Amazonian material” in just about every course I teach, including those that are within the Latin American and Latino Studies (LALS) and Sustainability Studies programs (i.e., not part of my home program in Anthropology).

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

Insights, stories, and the occasional article, yes.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Yes. And my own ethnographic examples too, my images and videos ( for instance in the courses on rituals and Epistemic differences).

Daniela Peluso

Yes, I use such examples/insights/materials in 1) Research Methods, 2) Anthropology of Business and 3) Relations: global perspectives on family, friendship and care. In 1 I discuss the . In 2, I compare an Amazonian village to a corporate site. In 3, I use Amazonian examples for marriage, adoption, partible paternity, the ancestors, care and commensality.

Juan A. Echeverri

Irredeemably.

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Other topics/comments that come to mind in the process of the conversation.

Laura Mentore

I’m curious to hear about any graduate level seminars on Amazonia, if they exist.

Kathleen Lowrey

Gajillions. But this is enough for now I think!

Jeremy Campbell

I’m very excited to learn how colleagues approach the nearly impossible challenge of teaching Amazonia in one semester’s time, to undergraduates or graduate students. Thanks SALSA—and especially Carlos Londoño—for putting together a session focused on teaching, a rare event at professional conferences!

Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin

I’ve given up on trying to cover ‘everything’ in my course…I’ve embraced the particularity of my course and the fact that by necessity it is only going to touch upon a subset of the relevant topics and a tiny proportion of all the good readings available… One weakness that I do feel guilty about is the absence of caboclos and immigrants to the Amazon in my course… I feel less guilty, but do harbor suspicions of inadequacy, regarding my very limited attention to political economy and the relations between economics at the global level and local phenomena. On the other hand, I think my (diligent) students come out with an articulate grasp of why ethnography is important, of some of the key patterns in Amazonian social life, and of the relations between different aspects of personal and social life.

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Thanks Carlos for the initiative. For me it’s been great to learn from colleagues outside the European context.

Daniela Peluso

I would be interested in hearing more about student projects.

Juan A. Echeverri

Two final comments: (1) I notice that in relation to the other six colleague in this dialogue, my position and experience has many contrasts – as I work in an university in Amazonia – but also many things in common. (2) It’s great to have the opportunity to converse about the experience of teaching with such a widespread – and qualified – group of colleagues; I realize now that we ourselves talk very little among us in our campus about these things. Gracias, Carlos por invitarme. I guess we do honor Steve’s memory with this conversation in Salsa’s lobby.

Photography: Daniela Peluso