Papers and Video Presentations
Students will be responsible for four short papers and one final paper.
Students will also be responsible for video presentations to accompany each paper. These can simply provide a short synopsis or précis of the paper’s argument or take a more fun and imaginative form. It’s ok to include slides or images, but more than anything, I want to see your faces!
Paper 1: Science Autoethnography
How does your relationship with science define who you are? Rather than answer in the abstract, you may want to narrate a particularly illustrative story or experience.
This paper should be 1–2 pages, double spaced, and is due during session 3.
Paper 2: Magical Technology
Drawing on accounts of spell-craft, divination, and paranormal detection, create a simple—but working—magical technology (spell, procedure, object, device…). In the accompanying paper, explain (in anthropological terms) how your technology works. Cite at least one class reading.
This paper should be 2–3 pages, double spaced, and is due during session 9.
Paper 3: Modern Enchantments
Drawing on the readings, analyze an example of technoscientific enchantment. You may want to focus on the magical discourses surrounding a particular technology, or magico-religious attitudes toward scientific activities. Draw explicitly on at least one of the readings and include specific evidence from your example.
This paper should be 2–3 pages, double spaced, and is due during session 13.
Student Example - “Kikkerman Fish Magic Soap” (PDF)
Paper 4: Magic Performance
Learn how to perform a magic trick—either one taught in class or one that you locate somewhere else. Reflect on your experiences performing in comparison with the processes of learning described in the readings.
This paper should be 2–3 pages, double spaced, and is due during session 18.
Student Example 3 - “Visibility is Unenchanting but Deception is Magical” (PDF) (Courtesy of Nelson Hidalgo Julia.)
Student Example 4 - “Joys of Magical Performance” (PDF) (Courtesy of Alex Paul-Ajuwape.)
Final Paper
Option 1: Pick a scientific or technological issue that is important to you—it could be one of the topics we discuss in class, or something else altogether. Find an example of a source (an article, a speech, a website, a forum post, a comment thread…) that, in your eyes, misunderstands, misrepresents or willfully distorts it (this does not have to be an example from the U.S., if you have the relevant linguistic and cultural knowledge to write about other national settings). Rather than opposing the source with rational arguments based upon your scientific expertise, use one or more of the analytical tools or theoretical perspectives we have developed in class, particularly with respect to magic and religion, to interpret it anthropologically and, if possible, empathetically. In other words, how might the anti-science position be understood as culturally reasonable if not scientifically defensible? Draw on at least two readings in your analysis.
Option 2: In light of our discussion of science denialism, examine strategies of scientific communication that you deem particularly effective or ineffective. Does your analysis suggest any possible avenues of engaging more productively with denialism and, more broadly, for communicating effectively about science? Draw on at least two readings in your analysis.
Option 3: Find someone who has experience with a system of belief different from your own and interview them about how that experience shapes their life and view of the world. Drawing on at least two readings to interpret your interviewee’s experiences anthropologically.
This paper should be 5–6 pages, double spaced, and is due during session 25.
Student Example 1 - “The Crypto Pill” (PDF)
Note: All student examples appear courtesy of MIT students. Unless otherwise requested, examples appear anonymously.
