CENTER  FOR  EXPERIMENTAL ETHNOGRAPHY

Hyper-Fictions/Hyper-Realism | 2021-2022 Theme

CEE #35: MUSEuMS FOR THE LIVING....

"If we are to have joy within museums, we also need to shake them up a bit, to inhabit them as spaces where we expect care. During this past month’s RAW Académie led by Linda Goode Bryant, the ICA was transformed into studio, garden, hang-out spot, and nap pod. And Annenberg Post-Doctoral Fellow Chaz Barracks hosted an event at the Penn Museum earlier this month called “Black Joy by Any Means Necessary: Deviance, Pleasure, and Critical Resistance.” 

FALL FELLOWS COURSES NOW REGISTERING

WE EMERGE AT THE SUNSET OF YOUR IDEOLOGY

ANTH 3660
Instructor: Saya Woolfalk
Fridays 12PM - 3PM

This is an undergraduate level production class that takes students through the process of creating a public facing artwork made in response to the ideas explored in my newly commissioned multimedia work for the exhibition Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America at PAFA.  My practice takes seriously the idea that ideological and symbolic systems can be re-imagined and activated through collaboration, imaginative play and masquerade....

FILMING THE FUTURE OF PHILADELPHIA

ANTH 3661/6661
​Instructor: Dr. Damani Partridge
 Thursday 3:30-6:30
This workshop is a rare opportunity to learn to use film to engage Philadelphia and its future from personal, political, social, and historical perspectives. Over one semester, we will simultaneously think, learn, and imagine Philadelphia through music, dance, anthropology, art, theater, architecture, literature, history, night life, day life, school life, social life, and life after school. We will read, we will write, and we will learn how to make films with an anthropologist... 

CONGRATULATIONS TO CEE GRANTEES!

Hakimah Abdul Fattah for "(Dis)placement:  Kinship, Archives, and Citizenship (Princeton I)"
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Tayebal Batool for  "Virtual Landscapes of Conservation:  Forests, Trees, and Urbanity in Historic St. Mary’s"

Maxime Cavajani for "Absenses:  deaths, arts, poetics"

Kinjal Dave for "A Correspondence:  Beyond the Politics of Representation in Jungle-nama"

Francisco Diaz for "Maya Mayanists:  Indigenous Archaeologists of the Early 20th Century (A documentary film)"

Rabani Garg for "Representations of Bon Bibi"

Rudy Gerson  for "Practices of Yiddish/Jewish Anarchism"
​Juliet Glazer  for  "Instruments of Value:  Multimodal Methods for Ethnographic Research in Instrument Making Communities"

KC Legacion for "Degrowth"

Dahlia Li for "Collaboration with Be Heintzman Hope, Asian histories of leisure, recreation, and felicitous affect"

Jeanne Liebermen for"Cultivando Saberes"

Jake Nussbaum for "From Morton to MOVE:  Reparations Now!  A community zine project"

Katleho Kano Shoro for"Witnessing Litema"

Melissa Skolnick-Noguera for"Practicing Art, Practicing Politics"

Vy Trinh for "One Take/Take One"

RECENT EVENTS

"Jungle-nama"
​MARCH 2&3 | 7 PM
The Center for Experimental Ethnography invites audiences to the first English stage performance of Amitav Ghosh's adaptation of an episode from the legend of Bon Bibi, titled: "Jungle-nama: A Story of the Sundarban." The performance will take place at the Prince Theatre at Penn Live Arts. MORE

Illustration by Salman Toor
Third Thursday: Meet the Fellows 
Feb 17th 2022
 February's Third Thursday event where CEE spring Fellows Amitav Ghosh and Ali Sethi discussed their collaboration on a course they are teaching with Penn's own Brooke O'Harra.  Amitav, Ali, and Brooke are leading students in a rigorous process of research, development, and rehearsal, culminating in a public performance 
KEEP READING
Third Thursday:
Osman +
Alexandrowicz
​Jan 20th 2022
Thursday, January 20 2022 the Center for Experimental Ethnography's Third Thursday had a conversation with Wazhmah Osman, Assistant Professor at Temple University, and Ra'anan Alexandrowicz, Director, Screenwriter, and Editor.  KEEP READING

SPRING FACULTY FELLOWS

ALI SETHI

Ali Sethi is a Brooklyn-based, Lahore-born author, singer, composer, producer and director. His debut novel "The Wishmaker" received widespread recognition and has been translated into five languages. Sethi's musical work combines classical Pakistani music and poetry with contemporary pop music, and he is formally apprenticed to to Naseeruddin Saami (since 2008) and  Ghazal singer Farida Khanum (since 2012). Sethi's multimedia collaboration "Disruption as Rapture (created with Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander and Chinese-American composer Du Yun) is housed in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
​KEEP READING
Photo: Ali Sethi performing (from Ali Sethi Facebook page)

AMITAV GHOSH

​Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He is the author of two books of non-fiction, a collection of essays and ten novels. His books have won many prizes and he holds four honorary doctorates. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and he has served on the Jury of the Locarno and Venice film festivals. In 2018 he became the first English-language writer to receive India’s highest literary honor, the Jnanpith Award. His most recent publication is "Jungle-nama", an adaptation of a legend from the Sundarban, with artwork by Salman Toor. His new book, The Nutmeg’s Curse; Parables for a Planet in Crisis, is a work of non-fiction published in October 2021.  KEEP READING
Photo: Amitav Ghosh

WATCH JUNGLE NAMA LIVE

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​You are also invited to contact us directly at experimental-ethno@upenn.edu.