Teaching the City Digital Workshop on April 8, 2022

How do we teach about the city? What sits at the core of our educational and pedagogical explorations of urban spaces and socialities within Anthropology and its sibling disciplines?

The Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA) will host a digital workshop on April 8, 2022, to explore these questions through a half-day of presentations and conversations. The workshop will feature a keynote address by John L. Jackson, Jr., the Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania; a roundtable featuring interdisciplinary scholars; and a series of lightning talks focused on pedagogical questions and practical case studies.

We invite proposals for 5-minute lightning talks as part of this program. The emphasis for the workshop is on exchanging ideas and providing resources, and thus we invite presentations focused on specific teaching tools or case studies relevant for teaching and learning in Urban Anthropology.

Possible themes for case study–based lightning talks: 

• What pedagogical approaches sit at the heart of your Urban Anthropology syllabus and how do you explore them within the classroom?
• What activities or lessons can encourage students to see urban spaces and socialities in new and more critical ways?
• What research methods are enduring for teaching the city? What new methods are important to incorporate and expand upon?
• What are the ethical issues faced when teaching urban research methods and/or when teaching urban anthropology in general?
• How have shifting social influences in urban worlds (the rise of social media, new patterns of tourism, expanded emphasis on urban planning, etc.) impacted how we teach about the city?
• How has the use and commodification of concepts in other fields (for example in the movement of work on place-making into urban design, marketing, etc.) influenced teaching in our field?

Lightning talk proposals should include a title, a maximum 150-word abstract, and the author name(s), contact information, and any institutional affiliation. We particularly invite presentations that bring together instructor and student perspectives on a topic. 

Accepted presenters will be expected to video record their talk before the workshop and to be present at the digital workshop for shared conversation and reflection with fellow panelists and attendees. Presentations may also be shared on the CUAA website following the workshop.

Submit lightning talk proposals via email by Friday Feb. 18 to CUAA.Teaching@gmail.com. Questions may be addressed to Suzanne Scheld (suzanne.scheld@csun.edu) and Angela Storey (angela.storey@louisville.edu).