Jamie A. Thomas
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#languagestory blog

Video & perspectives on communication, intercultural learning & the impact of anthropological research.

Close Encounters of the Skull Kind: An Ode to Public History

3/18/2016

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By Jamie A. Thomas
Human skull from the Samuel G. Morton Collection at the Penn Museum.
"Egyptian blended with the Negro form." Human skull from the Samuel G. Morton Collection at the Penn Museum.

Yo, What's With the Skulls?

For my seminar this week, I arranged a visit to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. We've been engaging with 19th century discourses of humanity, difference, and the body, and I wanted us to get out of the classroom to interact with materials from that time period. We were lucky enough to get up close and personal with human remains amassed (problematically) by Philadelphia physician Samuel G. Morton in the mid-1800s. These labelled skulls are now part of the eponymous collection researched and conserved by the Penn Museum. 

All semester long in my seminar, Languages of Fear, Racism, and Zombies, I've been guiding students through perspectives in critical discourse analysis and a range of discursive representations of humanity and the Other. We began with the Wild Man of the European Renaissance and traced the genealogy of this idea to the contemporary framing of Bear Grylls and his Man vs. Wild television series. Next, we began to explore Darwinian paradigm as it relates to our radicalized, gendered, and classist ideas of civilization, competition, and primitivism. We discussed the life and times of Nathaniel  Isaacs, Saartje Baartman, the implications of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and the Haitian and African origins of the zombie. Our next moves will be to examine the notion of the zombie in the context of Henrietta Lacks' immortal (and undead) cells, and the language and visual discourse of Romero's Night of the Living Dead.  

The way I see it, there's no studying the zombie without equally examining (1) what we think makes us human and (2) our fears of death, dying, and reanimation. What better way to enhance our study than to interact with a massive collection of human skulls? Admittedly, it was a bit creepy to be in a room surrounded by the ossified remains of hundreds of people I could never know. But, we were oriented by our immensely knowledgable guide, Penn Museum specialist, Paul Mitchell...  ​

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Breaking the Silence During a Quaker Meeting

1/11/2016

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By Elise Riley & Miki Gilmore

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A Quaker #languagestory

"Quakerism is opposed to the statement of strong emotion.
​Quakerism is also opposed to strong emotion." - Community stakeholder
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Moved By the Spirit.

On Sunday, November 8, 2015, 10:30 AM, we attended the Germantown Monthly Meeting. The community gathers every Sunday for Meeting for Worship, a religious service that is conducted in silence and is open to anyone. During Meeting for Worship, community members stand and speak when they feel moved by the spirit of God.

Passionately Confronting Racial Disparities.

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Midway through the scheduled gathering,  a woman stood up to speak about the racial disparities in Philadelphia's K-12 schools. She specifically made mention of the prestigious Germantown Friends School and another local school, Kelly Elementary School. Compared to the Friends school, Kelly Elementary is in a very poor state.

​The woman at the Quaker Meeting was noticeably upset while talking, and continued her speech for over ten minutes. In the midst of this woman speaking, another person stood up silently. Then, sensing her time was coming to a close, the very same woman addressed the room thus: “Does anyone hear me?” Another person replied, “We hear you, we hear you”. This person and the one who stood up while the woman was talking were performing an act called eldering, which is when a longstanding member of the community expresses their disapproval of somebody’s behavior.
 


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Problematizing the Meaning of 'Asian'

1/8/2016

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By Christine Lee & Emma Remy

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Bamboo Bistro: Americanized Asian Cuisine #languagestory

Representing Asian Cuisine in Greater Philadelphia.

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​We were interested in Bamboo Bistro as the only representative of Asian cuisine in the Swarthmore borough. Christine had eaten at Bamboo before, while Emma had yet to. We were expecting to find some Asian community that congregated at Bamboo, either comprising Asian students of Swarthmore College or residents of Swarthmore town. However, we discovered that, as a result of the demographics and expectations of the Swarthmore community, Bamboo is incredibly Americanized.
 
When we first approached Bamboo, the restaurant was empty because it was a mid-afternoon on a Sunday. Several employees were sitting near the entrance, on their phones or chatting in (presumably) Mandarin. After asking for an interview, two of the employees squabbled over whose English was better until Tim agreed to his voice being recorded. We were surprised to discover that, while the employees of Bamboo were from the Philadelphia Chinatown area, the restaurant was intended to present Americanized-Asian food and atmosphere.

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Community-Based Learning.

12/14/2015

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By Jamie A. Thomas
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Center City, Philadelphia: Introducing new authors for #LanguageStory blog, from my Fall 2015 introductory course in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology at Swarthmore College.

#LanguageStory as Critical & Creative Pedagogy.

I've learned so much from working with video from my fieldwork, and deliberately formulating it for a public audience, that I've begun to incorporate it into my teaching. This semester, my students have been engaging the Philadelphia community to learn more about how signs, symbols, and communication connect our everyday lives. Students in my introductory course in sociolinguistics at Swarthmore College come from all over the country, and from other institutions in the area, Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Our theme has been linguistic landscapes, the physical and imagined dimensions of language use that intersect with and govern our daily practices. In class, we've discussed the linguistic landscape of digital speech communities within Twitter and Yik Yak. We've also touched upon the very real ways in which we use words and multiple ways of speaking to connect in the classroom, in our homes, and in other settings, such as restaurants, libraries, coffeeshops, and Quaker meetings. 

Using our discussions as a foundation, I've guided students in my introductory course in sociolinguistics in methods in qualitative interviewing, field research, and visual anthropology, to enable them to conduct interviews and work collaboratively to compose videos on their original research. Their semester-long research culminated in new short videos for the #LanguageStory project, and exemplify another key component I value in research: Openness and adaptability. For many of these students, this was their first experience in soliciting interviews out in the field, and putting together a cohesive visual + digital story to detail their insights.

Introducing New Authors to the Blog.

In the next few posts for the blog, I'll be featuring the collaborative written and visual composition of student teams from my class. I'm so very proud of their efforts. Their deeply reflective videos explore multiple, intersectional aspects of life in the Philadelphia area, and offer critical insights on:
  • Gentrification & the Gayborhood
  • Knitting as a community practice
  • Communication in Quaker Meetings
  • The role of mural arts in generating community
  • Change in North Philadelphia
  • Coffeeshop atmosphere
  • Asianness and Chinese Cuisine

What I love most about these videos is how they illustrate the strong observational skills these students have developed over the semester, and are the shared vision of between 2 and 3 student researchers. I look forward to sharing their work here, and to the conversations and discussion I hope their work will generate. These discussions will carry the hallmark of #LanguageStory's purpose as a visual + digital project deeply rooted in engaged research, and the power and significance of language, from the learner's point of view.

Help Us Share #LanguageStory!

We invite you to share with us in these visual + digital stories, and to spread the word about how fascinating life in Philadelphia is. Use the hashtag to join the conversation here on the blog, on Twitter, or Instagram.
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Project Runway Tanzania.

11/13/2015

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By Jamie A. Thomas

Why Research is Powerful.

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One aspect of why research is so powerful, is because it brings us insight by making visible the relationship among factors we may have previously thought unrelated. And this is where anthropological research excels, by placing the human at the center of the study, with a parallel goal of contextualizing descriptions of human behavior.

​Importantly, research is only as good or strong as the contextual description it relies upon. Set against a poorly researched description of contributing factors, any study becomes too weak to stand on its conclusions. For example, in the picture above, there appears to be someone in jeans standing on the left. However, when brought into its full context, we can see there is really only one person (me) in the picture (below), standing instead on the right.

Building Contextualized Research is Not Easy.

Photo: At an outdoor market in Dar es Salaam.At an outdoor market in Dar es Salaam.
The richer the context we can develop because of our participation, passion, and mindful absorption of the locale of our research, the stronger we, as researchers, can come to understand the intersections of behaviors, histories, and practices in the daily lives of the people we care about. With context as a strong descriptive basis for our interpretations, we can feel reasonably certain about our conclusions and recommendations, because these are anchored by a deeply nuanced appreciation of multiple factors that combine to create the space we're focused upon. 

Even so, developing richly contextualized inquiry is not easy. But here's how I did it in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (2010-2011) to support my research on social identity and language policy in the teaching of Swahili to non-Africans on study abroad in Tanzania from the Austria, China, Libya, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. 

In my experience, there were there main principles at the core of my fieldwork that assisted me with building context for the study:
(1) Participation and friendship.
(2) Interpersonal communication.
​(3) Openness and adaptability.

In this post, I'll address the first of these: Participation and friendship.


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    Jamie A. Thomas is a linguistic anthropologist and digital media producer. Her forthcoming book Zombies Speak Swahili is all about the undead, videogames, and viral Black language. She teaches at Santa Monica College and CSU Dominguez Hills.

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