I took this course the spring quarter of my junior year. I had very little background in the course content or subject matter, but I had heard incredible reviews of the instructor. 

 

I was not disappointed. Our instructor, Professor Maria Elena Garcia taught her course with extreme attention to pedagogy and approached difficult and controversial topics with political savvy and strategy. We had earnest and honest conversations in spaces that I did not realize could exist in the academy. We watched documentaries that were hard to watch, read accounts of violence that were hard to read, and discussed topics that were hard to talk about. As students and scholars, we were encouraged to voice our thoughts, and pursue lines of inquiry wherever they would take us. We questioned our own positions frequently and Professor Garcia took great care to encourage this practice. 

 

By the end of the course, I felt a personal and academic connection with my peers. We had discussed not only the nature and goals of indigenous movements, but also had covered the very nature of knowledge production and consumption. We had ventured through a rigorous examination of the politics of representation and visuality. We had discussed the role of the very discipline of Anthropology itself. It was intense and exceptionally informative.