Teaching Tools is dedicated to the intersections between pedagogy, ethnography, and anthropology. The section is a growing resource for instructors, teaching assistants, and students, with everything from discussion guides and in-class activities to critically minded reflections on the practice, politics, and poetics of teaching anthropology, whether inside the academy or in alternative settings.

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Questions and proposals for guest posts can be sent to section editor, Dana McLachlin ([email protected]).

“Without Professor Microphones”: A Reminder to Have More Fun

“Without Professor Microphones”: A Reminder to Have More Fun

Palestinian cyclists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem claim their right to exist and move freely through their occupied homeland by riding their bikes. They ... More

Disruptive Discomforts and Irreparable Returns: Reflexive Accounts on Ethnographic Guilt, Power, and Powerlessness

Disruptive Discomforts and Irreparable Returns: Reflexive Accounts on Ethnographic Guilt, Power, and Powerlessness

"What transforms the process of ethnography endowing it with its thing-like, modal character as an ethnography? What is the ethnographic case expected to achiev... More

Teaching Anthropology Under Oath: Establishing Expertise in Asylum Hearings through Anthropological Training, Research, and Publications

Teaching Anthropology Under Oath: Establishing Expertise in Asylum Hearings through Anthropological Training, Research, and Publications

“Most people refer to me as Doctor Billingsley,” I stated. “Oh, I am sorry, Doctor Billingsley,” the attorney for the Department of Homeland Security replied. T... More

What I Wish Someone Taught Me When I Applied to My PhD: Considerations for Professors of Incoming (International) Students

What I Wish Someone Taught Me When I Applied to My PhD: Considerations for Professors of Incoming (International) Students

Fall is here and the new academic year has started. Three years ago, this coincided with my first active steps towards applying to a doctoral program in sociocu... More

Teaching Anthropological Theory: Reflections on Course Design and Pedagogy

Teaching Anthropological Theory: Reflections on Course Design and Pedagogy

Reflections on Learning Theory I have served as an anthropology lecturer at Chapman University in Orange, California, since 2013. During that time, I have had t... More

Teaching Ethnographic Methods with Progressive Dystopia

Teaching Ethnographic Methods with Progressive Dystopia

Savannah Shange’s Progressive Dystopia presents an ethnography of Robeson Justice Academy, a San Francisco school distinctive for its explicit espousal of a soc... More

Teaching SAPIENS: Centering Access and Relevance in Anthropological Education

Teaching SAPIENS: Centering Access and Relevance in Anthropological Education

Founded in January 2016, SAPIENS is a public anthropology magazine. Originally, SAPIENS was conceived as a repository, portal, and digital blog space to give fo... More

Ethnographic Experiments for Undergraduates: Reflections from The Ethnography Lab at the University of Toronto

Ethnographic Experiments for Undergraduates: Reflections from The Ethnography Lab at the University of Toronto

Watching and analyzing TikTok viral videos, walking and engaging with students on campus, and attending meetings of a particular social movement are examples of... More

What Does It Mean to Teach Anthropology? An Invitation

What Does It Mean to Teach Anthropology? An Invitation

What do we mean when we talk about teaching anthropology? More often than not, we refer specifically to university contexts, lecture halls, discussion sections,... More

Plantation Worlds

Plantation Worlds

There is no such thing as ‘the plantation.’ Although a recent surge in scholarship purports to address that very category, the term belies its own claim to univ... More