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Looking for resources for cultural anthropology through speculative fiction


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This is going to be a social sciences intensive year for my daughter (10th grade). She'll do AP psych with the local school, homegrown sociology (using edx courses and a couple of college intro sociology texts with hopefully a CLEP test at the end), and I am building a cultural anthropology through speculative fiction elective to go along with it. She wants to be an author and is currently at (and loving) a two week SF/F world-building writing camp at Wofford College, so I think this will be poular. :) It should also tie in to the world lit book club she's signed up for.

 

So far, I've found the following to use as a jumping off point:

* a youtube series of lectures on cultural anthropology https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrNK-SCMl9FJmLXsQOlmf2hjOjbIPK22T

* a MOOC from MIT http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/anthropology/21a-270-anthropology-through-speculative-fiction-fall-2009/assignments/

* another syllabus/reading list for a similar course http://rebeccamdean.blogspot.com/2012/06/teaching-anthropology-through-science.html

* and a blog post recommending a reading list https://samanthalgrace.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/fantasy-recommendations-for-anthropologists/

 

So, anyone have suggestions for either good, inexpensive resources for cultural anthro or book/story recommendations for the reading list? I'm looking for a decent intro text with a good companion website for resources like self-quizzes.

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This is going to be a social sciences intensive year for my daughter (10th grade). She'll do AP psych with the local school, homegrown sociology (using edx courses and a couple of college intro sociology texts with hopefully a CLEP test at the end), and I am building a cultural anthropology through speculative fiction elective to go along with it. She wants to be an author and is currently at (and loving) a two week SF/F world-building writing camp at Wofford College, so I think this will be poular. :) It should also tie in to the world lit book club she's signed up for.

 

So far, I've found the following to use as a jumping off point:

* a youtube series of lectures on cultural anthropology https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrNK-SCMl9FJmLXsQOlmf2hjOjbIPK22T

* a MOOC from MIT http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/anthropology/21a-270-anthropology-through-speculative-fiction-fall-2009/assignments/

* another syllabus/reading list for a similar course http://rebeccamdean.blogspot.com/2012/06/teaching-anthropology-through-science.html

* and a blog post recommending a reading list https://samanthalgrace.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/fantasy-recommendations-for-anthropologists/

 

So, anyone have suggestions for either good, inexpensive resources for cultural anthro or book/story recommendations for the reading list? I'm looking for a decent intro text with a good companion website for resources like self-quizzes.

 

I didn't at first didn't see that you'd included a recommended list already, and I was going to suggest... Ursula Le Guin.  And then I noticed the list and looked, and that was their big recommendation!  They're right. 

 

And, if you want her most overtly anthropological work of fiction, it's Always Coming Home, which is actually written from the point of view of a present-day anthropologist who has somehow (not explained) travelled to the future to study a utopian society in a post-industrial world, and is set up just like an anthropological study, with collected poetry, stories, and observations.  She in fact calls it an "anthropology of the future'.  It can be a slow read because it isn't a narrative, but I liked it.

 

But almost anything by Le Guin is wonderful.  Left Hand of Darkness is also told by an ambassador from Earth who comes to another planet and writes from the point of view of an outsider observing and analyzing an utterly foreign society and people.

 

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