240538 SE Anthropological Writing Genres (P4) (2017S)

Writing is the primary mode of communication for academics and thus for anthropologists. As the practice of writing has a central position in anthropology, it is a continuous topic for reflexive discussion, more so recently. Anthropologists spend a lot of time writing in different genres and styles. While academic writing is the most widespread genre that anthropologists have to master, they also write in many other genres ranging from journalism and administrative reports to fiction, poetry, even crime fiction inspired by ethnography.

The aims of the course are to familiarize students with different anthropological writing genres. The method is lectures, writing exercises and seminar discussions. The contents are the composition of an anthropological text, developing an argument, style and voice, writing an abstract, from fieldnotes to text, and writing journalism/popular texts.