Teaching the City Virtual Workshop

April 8, 2022 12:00-4:00 PM EDT (GMT -4)

Overview

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), a section of the American Anthropological Association, will host a digital workshop to explore these questions on April 8, 2022. Comprised of 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 discussion with interdisciplinary scholars; and a series of lightning talks focused on pedagogical questions and practical case studies. If you have questions about the event, please email: cuaa.teaching@gmail.com.

Preliminary Program

12:10-1:10 Roundtable discussion
The Challenges and Opportunities of Urban Teaching: Thinking Across Pedagogies and Practices
Hiba Bou Akar, Columbia University
Najib Hourani, Michigan State University
Martha Radice, Dalhousie University
Maria Vesperi, New College of Florida

1:10-1:20 Break
1:20-2:40 Concurrent lightning talk sessions

Session #1: Teaching Tools: Methods, Outcomes, and Engagement

The Life and Afterlife of a City-Focused Course
Yasmine Moataz Ahmed and Ghalia ElSrabki, with Zeina El Rayess, Zeina Khaled, Fady Zaky, and Hania Tarek, American University in Cairo

Which Way the City? Collaborative Urban Learning Beyond the Classroom
Kristin Koptiuch, Arizona State University

Tapping the Senses: Using Creative Methods to Weave Together Urban Theory and Urban Ethnography
Karen Lane, University of St Andrews

Urban Utopias
Cristina Moretti, Simon Fraser University

Tidal Cities: Visualizing Urban Contestations in Coastal Protection
Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa, Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research, and Johannes Herbeck, University of Bremen

Transdisciplinary Pedagogy and Collaboration in and beyond Urban Space
Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe, University of Applied Sciences NW Switzerland, and Carolin Genz, Humboldt University-Berlin

1:20-2:40 Concurrent lightning talk sessions

Session #2: Experiential Teaching and Big Concepts

Invisible Cities
Alessandro Angelini and Valeria Procupez, Johns Hopkins University

Building Empathy: Using Community-based Projects to Spur System-level Understanding of Civic Challenges
Kevin F. Hsu, and Terence Y. Zhao, Independent planning professionals

City in Lockdown: Visual Artifacts of the Coronavirus Era
Susan B. Hyatt, IUPUI

Infrastructure Field Notes
Scott Ross, George Washington University

Exploring Three European Cities by Virtual Exchange
Diana Szántó, Artemisszió Alapítvány

A Case Study On Studying the City
Faedah M. Totah with Czar Gentius-Harris and Rashmi Bojja, Virginia Commonwealth University

2:40-2:50 Break

2:50-3:50 Keynote Address

“What Anthroman Might Still Teach Us about Urban Ethnography”
John L. Jackson, Jr., Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania

Keynote abstract: When I started my fieldwork in Harlem, New York, in the 1990s, I created a super-heroic alter-ego by the name of Anthroman to help me through the fieldwork process. My first two ethnographic books, Harlemworld and Real Black, both explicitly involve Anthroman’s exploits as part of their narrative gestures. Almost thirty years later, I still think of that character/creation as a useful way to thematize the many demands and expectations of ethnographic research and to mitigate some of the methodological (and even psychological) challenges of qualitative urban research. Using my own ethnographic experiences in the United States as its anchor, this talk tries to think about what the figure of Anthroman might still allow us to say and see about the nature of ethnographic work today. What could Anthroman still teach ethnographers-in-the-making in the early 21st century? And how might Anthroman be re-imagined in the context of emergent challenges for ethnographers of urban life today?

3:50-4:00 Closing remarks and looking ahead