Instructor: B. Messick
In recent years, critical reflection has centered on ethnographic writing by anthropologists, but now attention is turning to what James Clifford called “the scratching of other pens.” This seminar treats forms of writing, and reading, as cultural and historical phenomena. In turn-of-the century anthropology, writing was considered the evolutionary “hallmark” of civilization, and a later, comparative approach claimed that the advent of writing “transformed human consciousness.” We will adapt approaches from literary criticism and anthropological linguistics for the ethnographic and archival study of other sexualities. We will examine varying relations with the spoken or recited word, diverse textual communities, and transformations of written form associate with print and with cyberspace.
