Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom : Engaging the Legacy of Edith and Victor Turner

The contributors gathered here revitalize “ethnographic performance”—the performed recreation of ethnographic subject matter pioneered by Victor and Edith Turner and Richard Schechner—as a progressive pedagogy for the 21 st century. They draw on their experiences in utilizing performances in a classroom setting to facilitate learning about the diversity of culture and ways of being in the world. The editors, themselves both students of Turner at the University of Virginia, and Richard Schechner share recollections of the Turners’ vision and set forth a humanistic pedagogical agenda for the future. A detailed appendix provides an implementation plan for ethnographic performances in the classroom. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiv The Foundations of Experiential Performance Pedagogy (Susan Brownell, Pamela R. Frese)....Pages 1-20 Points of Contact Between Anthropology and Theatre, Again (Richard Schechner)....Pages 21-37 Performing Ethnography (Victor Turner, Edith L. B. Turner)....Pages 39-52 Revisiting the Past for the Present: The Wedding Ritual Performance in the Turners’ Seminar (Pamela R. Frese)....Pages 53-66 Structure, Anti-structure, and Communitas in the Classroom: Notes on Embodied Theory (Susan Brownell)....Pages 67-82 Bridges to the Ancestors: Engaging Students with Ethnographic Performances in the Classroom (Pamela R. Frese)....Pages 83-99 The Smell of Smudge, the Work of Smoke: Reenacting Native American Ritual in an Anthropology Course (Edmund (Ned) Searles)....Pages 101-116 Grotto Water and Potato Chips: Turnerian Ethnographic Performance as Pedagogical Resistance (Michelle C. Johnson)....Pages 117-134 Dance Lessons: Performance as Engaged Experiential Embodiment (Jonathan S. Marion)....Pages 135-150 Pedagogies of the Imagination: Toward a New Performative Politics (Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston)....Pages 151-168 Cultivating Empathy by Performing Migration (Lauren Miller Griffith)....Pages 169-185 Moving Forward (Pamela R. Frese, Susan Brownell, with an essay by Edith L. B. Turner)....Pages 187-191 Back Matter ....Pages 193-216