It's all about Zora: Writer, Anthropologist, Filmmaker, Genius of the South, Capricorn Queen!

What's The Word? Anthropology. Difficult to define, but we throw our ideas into the ring! We cover its history, genealogy, what we think makes something anthropological, and what Indiana Jones has to do with Alyssa's research.

What We're Reading. You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston. We chose two of Hurston's essays that resonated the most with us and our scholarly pursuits: We read 'The Ten Commandments of Charm' and 'Crazy For This Democracy' to explore the politics of relationships and the hypocrisy of our "ass-and-all" democracy.

What In The World?! In this segment, we discuss the timelessness of Zora's work, how we're still facing the same obstacles as she did a century ago, letting Anthropology burn, why two Black women graduate students shouldn't be the only ones motivating students to stay in anthropology, the purposeful misreading of Zora's 'conservative' opinions, and why you should talk about the race war in front of white people.

We were riding the struggle bus recording and editing this episode, but thank you all for this year, we're so encouraged by your support!

Discussed In This Episode

You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays (Zora Neale Hurston, 2022)
The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn: Sociocultural Anthropology in 2019 (Ryan Cecil Jobson, 2019)

Syllabus for ZD 301 is available here!

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Transcript will be available on our website here.