Events
Organizer
- Brian Goldstone
Notes
- Image Credit/Caption: Robert R. Desjarlais

Locations and dates:
May 4: Heyman Center for the Humanities
May 5: The Schapiro Center, Davis Auditorium
"Image as Method: Ethnography – Photography – Film – Sensation – Perception" is a two-day symposium presented by the Society of Fellows in the Humanities.The symposium is organized by Fellow Brian Goldstone, Lecturer in Anthropology.
While recent years have seen an opening up within anthropology of the limits and potentialities of ethnographic description, with increasing use being made of photographic and filmic images in particular, considerably less attention has been paid to the question of whether images, broadly conceived, might present not just a supplementary means of conveying ethnographic insights, but a radically different way of imagining and arriving at them. What would an imagistic – as opposed to a more conventionally discursive or didactic – anthropological mode of knowing necessitate? What forms might this take, and what kinds of worlds – of sensation and memory, perception and experience – might it open onto? This two-day symposium brings together a select group of scholars, writers, and artists whose work lies at the forefront of attempts to address such questions. Affirming the observation of art historian Hans Belting that “at a fundamental level we must address the image not only as a product of a given medium, be it photography, painting, or video, but also as a product of our selves, for we generate images of our own (dreams, imaginings, personal perceptions) that we play out against other images in the visible world,” this event seeks to set ethnography on a terrain whereby empiricism, storytelling, fiction, autobiography, dream, even hallucination blur uneasily into one another.
Read coverage of the 'Image as Method' symposium in Somatosphere.
Comprising five panels on two consecutive evenings, and including a photography exhibition and film screening, this symposium is an attempt to explore and elaborate on the possibility that, as anthropologist Lisa Stevenson puts it, what gives images their distinctive power is their capacity to “express without formulating” – their tendency, in other words, to “drag the world along with them.”
The opening reception for the photography exhibition, "Photos in My Lost Hours," with images by Robert Desjarlais, will be held May 4 at 7:15pm in the Heyman Center lobby. For more work by Robert Desjarlais, visit his website.
Program
time3:30pm - 4:00pm EDT
Introduction: "Monstra, Astra" -- Brian Goldstone
time4:00pm - 5:30pm EDT
Panel I
Thinking in Pictures: Inuit, Colonialism, and the Unbidden Image
Lisa Stevenson
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
McGill University
The Color of Sensation in Indian Cinema
Anand Pandian
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Johns Hopkins University
Thinking Outside the Syntag
Elizabeth A. Povinelli
Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology
Columbia University
Chair
Julie Livingston
Visiting Professor of History, Social and Cultural Analysis
New York University
time5:30pm - 5:45pm EDT
Break I
time5:45pm - 7:00pm EDT
Panel Responses and Discussion
Stuart McLean
Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Minnesota
Angela Garcia
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Stanford University
time7:15pm - 9:15pm EDT
Exhibition Opening and Reception for Photos in My Lost Hours" with images by Robert Desjarlais
time4:00pm - 4:15pm EDT
Welcome and Introduction--Fellow Brian Goldstone
time4:00pm - 4:15pm EDT
Panel I
On the Beach
Hugh Raffles
Professor of Anthropology
The New School
Photography Tears the Subject from Itself
Robert R. Desjarlais
Professor of Anthropology
Sarah Lawrence College
Chair
Gökçe Günel
ACLS New Faculty Fellow in Anthropology
Columbia University
time5:30pm - 6:30pm EDT
Responses
Michael D. Jackson
Distinguished Visiting Professor
Harvard Divinity School
Natasha Myers
Associate Professor of Anthropology
York University
Vincent Crapanzano
Distinguished Professor
City University of New York
time6:30pm - 6:45pm EDT
Break I
time6:45pm - 8:30pm EDT
Film Screenings and Discussion
Manakamana (2014)
Stephanie Spray
Ph.D Candidate and Anthropologist
Harvard University
Still Life
Diana Allan
Postdoctoral Fellow
Society for the Humanities, Cornell University
Moderator
Anand Pandian
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Johns Hopkins University
Participants
- Diana Allan Postdoctoral Fellow Society for the Humanities, Cornell University
- Vincent Crapanzano Distinguished Professor City University of New York
- Robert R. Desjarlais Professor of Anthropology Sarah Lawrence College
- Angela Garcia Assistant Professor of Anthropology Stanford University
- Brian Goldstone Post-doctoral Fellow Columbia University
- Gökçe Günel ACLS New Faculty Fellow in Anthropology Columbia University
- Michael D. Jackson Distinguished Visiting Professor Harvard Divinity School
- Julie Livingston Visiting Professor of History, Social and Cultural Analysis New York University
- Stuart McLean Associate Professor of Anthropology University of Minnesota
- Natasha Myers Associate Professor of Anthropology York University
- Anand Pandian Associate Professor of Anthropology Johns Hopkins University
- Elizabeth A. Povinelli Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology Columbia University
- Hugh Raffles Professor of Anthropology The New School
- Stephanie Spray Ph.D Candidate and Anthropologist Harvard University
- Lisa Stevenson Assistant Professor of Anthropology McGill University