Strategies in Teaching Anthropology (2nd Edition)

Unique in focus and content, this book focuses on the “how” of teaching anthropology across all of its sub-fields―Cultural-Social, Biological, Archaeology, and Linguistics (and their two dimensions: research and applied studies)―and to provide a wide array of associated learning outcomes and student activities. It is a valuable single-source compendium of strategies and teaching “tricks of the trade” from a group of seasoned teaching anthropologists―working in a variety of teaching settings―who share their pedagogical techniques, knowledge, and observations. Focused on the applied, “how to do it” side of the pedagogical nature of teaching, the text is designed to fill the gap between students who are taking an anthropology class for the first time and instructors who know their subject matter in depth, but who are not sure how to present it to their students in a way that will capture and relay their own excitement with the subject and that will “engage” students in anthropological subject matter and its processes

Patricia Rice has taught anthropology for 40 years at West Virginia University where she is an Eberly Distinguished Professor. She has received numerous teaching awards: the American Anthropological Association/Oxford award for Undergraduate Teaching (1998), several West Virginia University Foundation teaching awards, and the Case/Carnegie Professor of the Year for the state of West Virginia (1991). Professor Rice was educated at Ohio State University and the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and her early field work and publications focused on various aspects of prehistoric art. She currently has several text books with Pearson and has co-edited the six volumes of Strategies in Teaching Anthropology with Pearson. With the other two coeditors of this series, she has conducted Teaching Workshops for the AAA since 2000. She co-edited The Teaching of Anthropology: Problems, Issues, and Decisions (Mayfield 1997) that was based on the American Anthropological Association’s Task Force on teaching, co-edited The Joys of Teaching Anthropology (2007) for McGraw Hill, and co-edits the journal General Anthropology.

David McCurdy has been teaching Anthropology at Macalester College since 1966. He has been chair of the department for extended periods since 1969. Professor McCurdy has received numerous teaching awards. He was the first recipient of the American Anthropological Association / Mayfield Award for Undergraduate Teaching (1997). He was also the recipient of the Macalester Distinguished Teaching Award (1995). Indeed he was made the subject of an article in 1977 by Change Magazine for innovative teaching in anthropology, Change, Special Report on Innovative Teaching, No. 6, 1977. Professor McCurdy completed his undergraduate work at Cornell University and received his B.A. in 1957. He finished his Masters in Anthropology from Stanford University in 1959.  In 1964, he completed his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell Univeristy. Currently Professor McCurdy’s interests in anthropology include ethnographic research, cognitive anthropology, applied anthropology as well as comparative religion in the United States & South Asia. His research to date consists of a major ethnography (1961-1963), then restudy (1985, 1991, 1994) of a Bhil tribal community in Rajasthan, India. He has also conducted a cross-cultural study of spirit possession (1966-1967). His ethnographic studies has encompassed corporate managers (1983), stockbrokers (1980), Jehovah witnesses (1973), as well as members of an environment movement (1968-1969).  He has also performed continued ethnography (1988-1999) on a national motocycle association.