[URBANTH-L]SUNTA Panel Proposal (Sam Beck)

[Angela Jancius]

I left off the enclosure.  Here it is the the announcement with the
enclosure.

Please submit your contribution ideas to: sb43 at cornell.edu


Sam Beck, Cornell
Carl Maida, UCLA


This session provides a critical analysis of experience-based learning and
its relation to public anthropology in the new century. Papers focus on the
varieties of "real-world coursework," including experience-based and
community service learning, and internships. These styles of learning are
being promoted to administrators, faculty, and students as key mediators
between the world of higher education and the service-oriented workplace.
Who is this pedagogy designed for, and why is it so prevalent in the
contemporary student-centered, corporate university?  Anthropologists have
been involved in this form of learning and, from one point of view the
practice has been part of our discipline's "colonial" legacy.  British
anthropologists were involved in learning about "the other" to further the
imperial program.  American anthropologists worked at the Indian frontier to
garner information also for the expansion of European hegemony in North
America. Experience-based learning is a double-edged sword upon which our
field's ethical standards are balanced. What is the nature and quality of
the relationship we develop with - the university, the community, and our
students - as anthropologists become increasingly engaged in this style of
learning? How has "public" scholarship in the form of applied, practicing,
and public anthropology changed both the discipline in the university, and
the way professionals and the lay public think about what counts as
anthropological knowledge?