The Art of Anthropology / The Anthropology of Art

The Art of Anthropology/The Anthropology of Art brings together thirteen essays, all of which were presented at the March 2011 annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society (SAS) in Richmond, Virginia.

Collectively, the essays in this volume explore not only art through the lens of anthropology but also anthropology through the lens of art. Given that art is a social phenomenon, the contributors to this volume interpret the complex relationships between art and anthropology as a means of fashioning novelty, continuity, and expression in everyday life. They further explore this connection by reifying customs and traditions through texts, textures, and events, thereby shaping the very artistic skills acquired by experience, study, and observation into something culturally meaningful.

In this book, the contributors revisit older debates within the discipline about the relationship between anthropology’s messages and the rhetoric that conveys those messages in new ways. They ask how and why anthropology is persuasive and how artful forms of anthropology in the media and the classroom shape and shift public understandings of the human world.

The papers in this volume are organized into four groups: Textual Art, Art Valuation, Critical Art, and Art and Anthropology in Our Classroom and Colleges.

Brandon D. Lundy is an assistant professor of anthropology at Kennesaw State University.