Traveling is still an important part of contemporary life and it is related to ongoing histories of colonization, immigration and displacement. The experience of entering another culture is one of the abiding themes of the human experience. It is the stuff of literature, film and the social sciences, especially anthropology. What does it mean to enter another social and material culture in another landscape? What does it mean to re-enter one’s own society after having been immersed in another?
The module will explore one of the dominant themes of anthropology – the intercultural encounter. It will expose students to some iconic writings produced by those who venture out of their own societies to discover, explore or study other peoples and places. These often occur in very tense and dangerous circumstances. In particular, we will analyse how these writings illuminate perceptions of peoples, cultures and places, and how these become assembled into various orders of knowledge. We will examine a range of intercultural understandings and perceptions put forward in travelers’ reports, missionaries diaries, fiction, film and the accounts of indigenous peoples themselves. This module shows how depictions of other societies can take many different forms; pejorative, judgmental, uncomprehending, but also empathic and even ‘romantic.’ Such depictions can be used to justify policies and courses of action towards peoples and their natural environments.
One of the most important objectives of the module is to examine how the self and the other are constituted in intercultural encounters in a range of different places at different times in history. We will focus on primary source materials with additional film screenings each week.