Image: Susan Drucker-Brown, © Biblioteca de Investigación Juan de Córdova

Rethinking anthropological fieldwork in historical perspective

Mon 22 April

Alison Richard Building

The exhibition ‘A woman in the field. Susan Drucker-Brown’s photographs and anthropological fieldnotes (Mexico 1957-1958)‘ will display photographs and ethnographic fieldnotes produced by Cambridge-based anthropologist Susan Drucker-Brown in the village of Jamiltepec (Oaxaca, Mexico) in 1957 and 1958.

Within the framework of this exhibition, this one-day event seeks to foster discussion around the three transversal lines of the exhibition: Firstly, the processes of mestizaje, indigeneity and modernisation experienced in Mexico in the mid-twentieth century at an indigenous and rural locality. Secondly, the everyday life of ethnographic research and, in particular, the role of women in fieldwork. And thirdly, the afterlives of the materials produced during fieldwork, either as collections in museums or archives, or as part of restitution processes to the villages where the anthropologists worked.

The event includes a student workshop, a round table around photographic collections and three lectures on Susan Drucker’s work, on the historisation of field interactions and on mestizaje and categories of identification in Mexico.
This event may be of interest to audiences working on race, gender, indigeneity, photography, anthropology, archaeology collections, and museums.

Cost: Free