Innovative Teaching Showcase 2005-06 Text Only Version

Anthropology 457: Anthropology of Death and Dying
War Journal

See also: Syllabus | Weekly Reflection Papers | War Journal | Research Paper

The Scholar Warrior

Without an understanding of war and human rights, as culturally embodied and manufactured, we will lack a full understanding of what it means to human.

We Try for conscious, active, disciplined effort to address the elements of thought by continually assessing the course of construction of thinking: adjusting, adapting, improving and deliberately assessing thinking to determine strengths and limitations.
We Try to train the mind in: intellectual persistence, humility, empathy, courage and fair mindedness.
We Try to train the mind in solid reasoning: precision, relevance, depth, accuracy and assessment.
We Try to train the mind in: awareness of the elements of thought, assumptions, and points of view.
We Try to "think from within."

Epistemological exposition.
Thinking about the way we think.

Your War Journal

An academic journal can take a number of different forms but you may want to reflect the continuing and changing focus of lectures, discussion, and assigned readings. The following may elaborate the different forms of entries, but a primary goal is for you to "debrief" for your own sake. A former student's journal is available for you to review as a model.

New Insights or Reactions

If the new information or the process or organization presented in lectures and readings shows some attitude or assumption you have previously held to be inadequate or that you never considered before you might describe briefly how you feel/think and the resistance or judgment you have concerning the new information, process, or organization. A common error is to mistake the confirmation of one's own values for new insight. Complaining about "Big Daddy," the government, or "America" generally, or specifically your fellow students or instructor's limitations is not new insight. What can you offer, at least in your journal, besides complaints - try to think about the way you think as well as the way Americans, your fellow students, or the instructor or discipline?

Cross Cultural Comparisons

You could select some aspect of human rights or war and compare two or more cultures. You might describe how each culture carries out the process or war or abuse and what it means to each culture - how it fits into the total pattern of meaning. Is it possible to know about war and human rights abuses in our own culture or any other? How do we measure or compare a culture of war?

Critical Analysis

This may may be reflexive, show epistemological exposition, and the dialectic between what we think we know and what we could see/know differently. Critical analysis need not be criticism or agreement but a willingness to persist in knowing differently.