“Storytelling: that’s part of the power of podcasts, and just the power of ethnography in general, to really have people tell their own stories. And I think it’s those stories that really capture students’ interest and attention, and make them start to think about why anthropology really matters.”

This month, we’re bringing you an episode from our friends at Anthropod, the podcast for the Society for Cultural Anthropology. In this episode, Angela Jenks, medical anthropologist and Assistant Teaching Professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, talks to Anar Parikh, PhD candidate at Brown University, about how to teach with podcasts. They cover the strengths and weaknesses of using audio in the classroom, teaching students how to listen, strategies for engaging both graduate students and undergrads, and how to encourage students and teachers to engage with the technology of audio production.

You can follow Dr. Jenks on Twitter at @angelacjenks, and interviewer Anar Parikh at @anarparikh.

Find Anthropod on the Cultural Anthropology website, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

CITATIONS

Invisibilia: “the power of categories.” https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/384065938/the-power-of-categories

Only Human: “I got Indian in my family: An Another Round takeover.” https://www.wnyc.org/story/i-got-indian-my-family-another-round-takeover/

QUOTES

“A lot of podcasts are designed to communicate among anthropologists, and that can be really useful… or sometimes they’re designed to communicate across academic disciplines… But I think when there’s a focus on pedagogy, I think very often a lot of that focus has to be on considering an audience that may only have a very vague understanding of what exactly anthropology is, what we do, what major debate or issues in the field have been. And so oftentimes trying to sort through those topics and kind of explain them in ways that may be very different if you’re talking to an audience of anthropologists.”

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the schools of Culture, History, and Language and Archaeology and Anthropology at Australian National University, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Show notes by Ian Pollock

KEYWORDS

Anthropology, ethnography, podcasts, podcasting, audio, pedagogy, teaching, education, graduate, undergraduate