The discipline of anthropology—as we know and engage with it today—builds on the texts, theories, and methodologies of the scholars that came before us. Thus, in alignment with anthropology’s general emphasis on apprehending content within its context, a thorough understanding of the discipline and its various schools of thought requires a dynamic grasp of its history and how broader social and historical contexts influenced past and ongoing debates.
This interactive timeline is an invaluable resource for students, instructors, or anyone who might be interested in the history of anthropology, within and beyond UBC. The timeline displays theoretical and methodological developments in anthropology as well as the disciplinary context and historical events that shaped them. The timeline is organized chronologically, and each entry is divided into 7 categories, which are visible alongside the timeline display: Theories, Publications, Scholars, Institutions, History, Methodologies, and Controversies.
In engaging with these entries, this Open Educational Resource allows students to easily navigate the interrelations of key theories and texts, and enables them to move back and forth between entries while viewing key events within the same era. In this way, the timeline is an approachable visual learning resource that can help students identify patterns, trends, and significant turning points within the history of anthropology.
For instructors, this resource helps display complex information concisely and in a visually appealing and accessible format. It also integrates various media (text, images, videos, etc.), providing diverse forms of engagement for users to consider in their study of specific periods, theories, methodologies, controversies, and historical events. The timeline also provides useful references, supplementary suggested readings, and points of discussion that can help educators implement this resource into their own curricula.
This resource was initially established in an undergraduate history of anthropology class (ANTH400) at UBC where students were tasked with making small contributions to the timeline. This project has since been modified and expanded upon to enhance its usefulness as an educational tool for anthropological theory and history classes. In particular, this project aims to enhance accessibility by increasing student engagement with materials and improving the approachability of concepts and disciplinary history.
This project also aims to encourage participatory and educational collaboration. This timeline relies on entries from students and instructors, thus facilitating and enabling a collaborative approach to content creation and empowering individuals to shape educational content. This timeline also improves the affordability of resources useful in a broad range of anthropological courses by enabling vital information on the progression of events and theoretical developments to be taught by others without requiring additional design and preparation labour.
As this project evolves, we hope to provide more opportunities for collaboration by allowing students and instructors to submit their own entries to the timeline or suggest edits to existing entries, via a form or portal.
Creators
Students in History of Anthropology (ANTH400)
The content of this timeline is created by UBC’s History of Anthropology (ANTH400) class.
Amir Shiva
Amir Shiva teaches anthropology at the University of British Columbia. He is particularly interested in how anthropology’s history is, in many ways, the history of its own self-reflection—how debates over theory, method, and ethics have continually reshaped the discipline. This timeline project reflects a commitment to training the next generation of anthropologists by engaging students in the active production of knowledge. Rather than treating disciplinary history as a static archive, this resource positions students as contributors, demonstrating that anthropology is not only something to be studied but something to be made. By contextualizing theoretical and methodological developments alongside historical events, the timeline highlights anthropology as an evolving conversation rather than a fixed body of knowledge. Amir hopes this project fosters critical engagement with the discipline’s past while encouraging students to see themselves as participants in shaping its future.
Megan Nguyen
Megan has contributed to this resource as both a student and an academic assistant. Much inclined to text-based and chronological learning, this timeline has provided her with the structure and order she needs to more thoroughly understand the history of her discipline and the interconnected origins of the ideas and works she engages with frequently. Simultaneously, the flexible, interactive, and multimedia aspects of this resource have provided a personalized and engaging learning experience that attends to the complex web of ideas and theories in anthropology. In this way, working on and interacting with this project has reaffirmed Megan’s appreciation for how the discipline of anthropology has and continues to evolve, and the multitude of ways scholars have come to learn from and challenge the ideas that came before them.
Beyond academics, Megan frequently turns to crafting, music, reading, and baking. These hobbies have helped her find solace in creativity and creation while also enabling her to engage more imaginatively with her work in sports and medical anthropology.
Attribution
Anthro Chronicle by UBC Anthropology Students is licensed under CC-BY-NC 4.0. You are welcome to reuse, remix, revise, and redistribute the content for non-commercial purposes, provided proper attribution is given. Please attribute this website in a way that recognizes the original source and any modifications made.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Open UBC for supporting this project through an Open Educational Resources Rapid Innovation Grant.