STUDY PROGRAMME
Painting and Visual Arts

AFAM CODE
ABST55

DISCIPLINARY AREA
Cultural Anthropology

DISCIPLINARY FIELD
Cultural Anthropology

CREDITS
6

APPROACH
Theoretical

The course aims at providing study elements concerning the new “ways of living”: how the recent information technology revolution has changed the ways of living within our homes and cities. Following to the disappearance of the traditional dimensions of public and private, houses have become a place of communication with the world, while the urban context has turned into an “extension of the private sphere”. The students investigate new forms of living: semi-public and semi-private spaces, space for relationships and personal space, the new objects of “surmodernity”, and Marc Augé’s anonymous “nonplaces”, which “no matter where” they are built, have no identity and can be recognized only through linguistic messages and signs. The space, crossed through by relationship and communication elements, is “desacralized” (i.e. loses the hierarchic connotations of the patriarchal symbolic order), and all things mix and reflect themselves in artistic and media languages as well as in artistic practice.

This course is made of a single module of 6 CFA credits.

The course aims at bringing the students closer to the field of cultural anthropology, and pays particular attention to the methodological aspects of ethno-anthropological research and of its restitution in artistic form. During the course, the representation of the other is also addressed, as well as examples of the disciplinary hybridization between art and ethnography, which can be useful for the academic and artistic research of each student.

The first teaching unit consists in the introduction to the discipline. Through the discussion of the main schools and lines of thought in cultural anthropology, the students analyse the methodologies, problems and contributions of individual authors who have engaged in the study of the similarities and cultural differences between different human groups. The second didactic unit focuses on the hybrid perspective between art and anthropology. The challenge of contemporary anthropology goes through dialogue, and sometimes conflict, between expressive forms and interdisciplinary interpretations that intertwine their knowledge and methodology.

• Theoretical/project based classroom lectures

• Workshops

• Use of tutorials, videos or other media tools for detailed study

• Classroom debates and presentations

• Individual study and research

• Field trips (conferences, meetings, visits to exhibitions as organized by the professor or department)

Assessment is based on the overall competence of the students and may include:

• Oral exam

• Written exam

• Submission of papers, projects or research work

Further details on specific tests can be provided by the professor during the course. Assessment criteria include commitment, active participation and personal growth of the students over the course.

• Harold Barclay, People without government An Anthropology of Anarchism.

• P. Bourgois J. Schonberg, Righteous Dopefiend.

• C. Geertz, The interpretation of cultures.

• J.C. Scott, Against the Grain: A deep history of the earliest states.

• M. Taussig, Beauty and The Beast.

• J. Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art.

Further bibliographic recommendations may be provided by the professor during the course. A lot of the referenced material, together with other in-depth study material, can be consulted online in MyNaba, in the Library section.