Anthropology, like its object of study, is complicated and fascinating.
Anthropologists want to know everything about our species, from its earliest origins to its complex present, and use every tool and question we can think of to understand our embodied, social nature.
Firing a portable X-ray fluorescence scanner at 2,000-year-old artifacts last summer, Claire Stanecki discovered the value of hands-on education. A 2020 graduate who majored in anthropology and Spanish, Stanecki’s Arts and Letters education has been defined by exploring nontraditional forms of learning — from conducting research at a museum to studying the benefits of bilingual education in a local school. “The ability to learn about something and actually go interact with it is so incredibly mind-blowing,” she said.
Using ethnographical techniques from both anthropology and journalism, I completed around 50 hours of interviews and transcribed hundreds of pages of notes by the end of January. My focus turned to the podcast, starting with his childhood in South Bend and finishing with his concession speech at the Century Center in March. In the end, I made a five-episode series called “Spotlight on South Bend.”
