Transitions: Contemporary Ethnographic Film

Catalog description

"Transitions may be the most constant feature of everyday life. With endless uncertainties that are exacerbated by political turmoil, pandemic unpredictability, and climate crisis, our quotidian experiences are steeped in mutability. Transitions present us with both challenges and opportunities, not only in our everyday lives but also in our work. Within the word transition, emphasizing the prefix trans opens up avenues of thought that celebrate the in-betweenness of our state of being. Rather than focusing on the pressures to move on to the next thing (to be post-COVID, post-racial, post-colonial, as it may), tarrying in transition helps us to appreciate the difficult path toward restoring healthy relationships. This includes but is not limited to transnationalism, trans identities, transitivity, transdisciplinarity, translanguaging, transparency, transhumanism, transluminescence, translation, transliteration, transcendence, transfusion, and transmutation." (SVAFF 2023) We will spend class time viewing and discussing the latest and greatest ethnographic films as presented at the Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival 2023 in Toronto with students defining their own personal point of view on what this word means in the context of each film? in Transition?