ANTH 305

Anthropology of the Arts

Visual expression or image making is found worldwide, what do we mean by this? If we acknowledge a certain aesthetic, how does it differ from area to area? Are these differences defined culturally, environmentally, etc.?  This course takes a comparative approach to the arts in different cultural traditions, from small-scale societies to contemporary urban ones.
Counts towards anthropology major in Category 1 – Ethnographic and Archaeological Research; or Category 3 – Ethnographic Areas and Topics.
Prerequisite: Third-year standing.

Websites related to the course material:

Art Crimes – The Writing on the Wall is a one stop site, established in 1994, on graffiti art and style writing around the world, includes a variety of resources.

Bradshaw Foundation. Among the many categories included are a World Rock Art Archives, a Film Archive, and Cave Art: An Intuition of Eternity.

Rock Art Studies: Bibliographic Database is compiled by Leigh Marymor and hosted by the Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, AZ. As of May 2018, the database has 37,277 citations.

Street Art News, founded in 2009,provides wide coverage on urban art, includes interviews, exhibitions, videos, and more.

UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Rock Art identifies a number of leaders in rock research and their institutions; includes interviews.

Vancouver Mural Festival hosts an annual week-long event in August in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.  It began in 2016; check out the mural map.

Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising. There’s an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the ‘Aha’. Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in — the one that we think is reality.
–Alan Kay, computer scientist (b. 17 May 1940)

Last updated 2018-09-03