Review and Summary of Towson University’s Media Methods Conference: Using Technology for Research & Engagement in Higher Education on April 18, 2015
On Saturday April 18, 2015, I had the privilege of attending Towson University’s first anthropology conference, Media Methods: Using Technology for Research & Engagement in Higher Education. Throughout the day I attended workshops and conversed with peers and professors alike about the rising prevalence and influence of media and technology, in both our lives and in the anthropological field.
John Jackson, whom was the keynote speaker of the conference, gave the introduction to the day, as well as an introduction to the topic of different media methods that have emerged in the field of anthropology. John Jackson gave what he called a “digital intellectual autobiography” for the audience.
As a member of the anthropological field, academia was always stressed to him, although his larger interest lied in filmmaking. Jackson stated that as an anthropologist he felt, “only after making films could he put bigger than life issues into proper perspective.” What John Jackson says he appreciates the most about film is the materiality of it. In academia, you can write about certain experiences all you want, but much comes from the readers’ inference of what the culture and environment for which the ethnographic research that is taking place really looks like. Here, Jackson references Clifford Geertz’s idea of thick description, saying that film allows for much more “powerfully thick” images than writing in academia can. Many argue that what film can offer is only thin, by what you can see and by physical framing, and Jackson agrees. What he counters this with is that he doesn’t think film can be taken on its own, what it needs is the anthropologist to fill in the blanks and detail what is not captured in the films frame. Jackson continues to counter this argument by explaining the reason that film can be so appealing for an audience. Visual images carry thickness, “they offer all the imagined images that you fantasize about off a printer page.” What Jackson finds powerful about simple basic short films is that there is much focus on what’s beside the point, meaning there is more to what the filmmaker is trying to emphasize.
Jackson reiterates his belief that beyond a printed page, film gives identity, exclusiveness to the individual and specificity that doesn’t allow hovering as omnisciently as research does. He boasts that the limitations for which the written approach of academia has, is expanded with the use of film. He continues this argument by his belief that film mobilizes subjects and environments, a film maker cannot easily write out or write around a certain individual whom may be a key figure but whom may not be central to their thesis, where an academic writer can. He offers that film allows a concrete indexical relationship between what we can see and what we understand.
John Jackson believes that the images given by film allow an attached emotionality to subjects, environments, and research that writing in academia simply cannot offer. He states an appreciated flaw in film making, because as a filmmaker you can never completely control what’s in the frame, and he believes that when the distraction of the narrative eventually goes away, what audiences are left with is the raw emotion and raw existence of the society or community that is being researched. John Jackson praises the beauty in the lack of control that filmmakers have, something he believes ethnographic writing cannot employ.
What John Jackson’s take away message for the audience was is that there is value in film, with the sociality and community it brings between the ethnographic research team and with those in the environment in the locations by the training involved in the research conducted. The process, Jackson stresses, is and always will be far more important than any final product.
Jackson closes his speech by relating back to his autobiography, stating that as he has watched the use of ethnographic film in research transform, he is proud that his students will be the first to have visual dissertations not met with opposition, and that they are just the tip of the iceberg for the development of the field. He reiterates to the audience that conferences such as this one are valuable in the future of the academy, and that throughout the day he hopes the audience uses their new insights to think about the criteria we use to adjudicate this new field and to continue to think critically with peers and colleagues about what the future of this field may look like.
Following Jackson’s opening words, I attended my first workshop of the day. Given by Gala True, the core investigator at the Department of Veterans Affairs who gave a presentation detailing her most recent and proudest work, “From War to Home: Through a Veteran’s Lens” in which True collaborated with 40 veterans from all major branches of the military who partook in Operation Enduring Freedom and/or Operation Iraqi Freedom in order to tell their stories of their military service, deployment, and homecoming. True and the veterans from her project utilized photovoice media, “process of giving people cameras to help document context, causes, solutions, or resources within a community to address certain and specific issues.” What True reiterated throughout her presentation was that photovoice was not just the researcher, but that participants were seen as collaborators who developed a partnership and shared responsibilities of the decision making process throughout the project with the researcher. True stated that photovoice, in short, is, “exploring lived experiences through photographs.” After seeing just part of the wonderful exhibit that True has put forth with these veterans, and hearing the efforts she has gone through to make their voices heard, I couldn’t help but be moved. I have had experience with a loved one whom is a marine veteran in Afghanistan and have seen the trouble that he has faced adjusting to life at home, as well as the walls and closed doors he has come up against with the VA. I appreciate, applaud, and am thankful for Gala True and her veteran collaborators effort in trying to publicize the struggles that veterans face both personally, within their community, and with the benefits they are supposed to be promised by the government following their time of duty.
After a lunch filled with conversation about new methods of conducting research and the ability that technology has given us to reach far larger groups of people with information, I was able to attend my second workshop of the day. This workshop, given by William Shewbridge, detailed video archiving and websites and exemplified this through UMBC’s stories of Sparrows Point Mill. Video archiving and websites allows for the creating of a personal narrative through digital stories. Shewbridge refers to these videos as, “visual essays,” explaining that these archives and the websites for which they are displayed are not meant to serve the purpose of giving a voice; rather, they are there to amplify the already existing voices. Shewbridge stressed that in the making of these websites, there is a delicate balance act between the complexity of the website and the flexibility of the website that must occur during creation. During his workshop, Shewbridge detailed for his audience the importance of contemporary video archives by use of websites and how he sees its affects to be useful in the future. He stated that these websites archive, place into the Interweb storage, stories that can be accessed well into the future.
I am very glad that I was able to experience this conference and that I was able to open my networks not only with my peers, but with people making headway within the field of anthropology. My take away from this conference is that technology is merely enhancing the field of anthropology, making the academia side more accessible to others, and that this is just the beginning of positive change for ethnographic research. I hope that I am able to participate in a conference such as this in the future, for I learned a lot and enjoyed my time with my peers and the professors and working researchers that I met.