The Importance of Reading

For success in this or any other course, it is absolutely crucial that you keep up with the assigned reading.

Beyond success in the class, if you want to have the most fully rewarding learning experience possible, I encourage you to be a student and scholar of life and not just a student meeting set requirements in a specific course. Read everything you can get your hands on. Learning through reading is not a replacement for learning through experience (which is one reason for the hands-on observation in the field exercise assignment) as much as a complement to it – a different way of learning. Reading broadly and thoroughly allows you to access the experiences, perspectives, and arguments of countless individuals. The more you read and learn through reading, the more you’ll understand your own experiences of the world or the materials you encounter in courses such as this one.

The following are links to useful reading available online that are directly relevant to anthropology, though again, I encourage you to read broadly and beyond a single academic discipline (and not just online).

Anthropology and Academic News Sites:

“Anthropology in the News” is a digest of links to news items directly relevant to one of the sub-fields of anthropology: http://anthropology.tamu.edu/news.htm

“Science Daily” posts a wide variety of news stories focusing on different sciences, including anthropology: http://www.sciencedaily.com/

“Arts and Letters Daily” posts links to essays and articles pertaining to humanities disciplines (which can also include anthropology, as in many ways anthropology straddles a divide between the sciences and humanities): http://www.aldaily.com/

World News Sites:

Keeping up with current events around the world can be interesting in itself and is important for relating anthropological study to current and changing realities. The following sites provide extensive coverage of particular world areas.

AllAfrica.com: http://allafrica.com/

Middle Eastern Times: http://www.metimes.com/

Asia Times: http://www.atimes.com/

Latin American Post: http://www.latinamericanpost.com/

Indian Country Today: http://www.indiancountry.com/

Anthropology Blogs

There are a growing number of blogs written by anthropology graduate students and professionals that present a variety of interesting perspectives from within the discipline. The following are some I find regularly insightful (plus the last one on the list, written by me, that I hope is insightful):

Culture Matters: http://culturematters.wordpress.com/

Anthropology Net: http://anthropology.net/

Hot Cup of Joe: http://hotcupofjoe.blogspot.com/

Nicolette Bethel’s Blog: http://nicobethel.net/blogworld/

Savage Minds: http://www.savageminds.org/

Robert Philen’s Blog: http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/