Class Id: 7884
Days: W
Start Time: 01:30 PM
End Time: 04:20 PM
Building: BURRH
Room: 216
Course Id: 3484
Departments and Numbers: ANT 360
Area: EM
Title: The Uses of Deception: Perspectives on Magic and Science
Description: "Deception" usually has negative connotations, but scientists and magicians use it in service of truth, justice, and entertainment. For a magician's trick to induce doubt and delight, an audience's attention must be misdirected. Likewise, biomedicine and many other fields use deception (e.g., the placebo) as a research tool. Topics include: the 'real' as objective truth or cultural construct; social fictions in daily life; the tangled histories and present day alliance of science and magic; fraudulent vs. legitimate deception; popular access to science. Guest magicians may visit; research projects may involve fieldwork and multimedia.
Prerequisites: This seminar approaches the uses of deception anthropologically, as culturally meaningful practices. Participants must have at least one prior course in anthropology and/or history of science and/or a field that customarily employs misdirection as a research technique, or instructor's permission. Students with prior training in ethnographic methods (or other relevant experience) are welcome to design field research projects.
Professors: Rena S. Lederman
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Created by Bob Dondero.