ABSTRACT

Although Tim Asch was probably best known – and will be most remembered – for his many ethnographic films, a major portion of his adult career was spent teaching and writing and talking about teaching, especially championing the use of ethnographic film in the teaching of anthropology. In addition to writing several articles that dealt specifically with pedagogy and film, Asch promoted and collaborated on the production of study guides to accompany filmic material. He taught an uncountable number of undergraduate and graduate students at Brandeis, Harvard, New York University, The Australian National University, and the University of Southern California and gave numerous lectures and workshops at universities in America, Europe, Australia and Asia. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Center for Visual Anthropology’s Master’s Degree program in Visual Anthropology (MAVA) at the University of Southern California, where he urged students to write study guides to accompany their visual projects and the written portion of their degree requirements. Finally, for more than a decade, in collaboration with myself and others, Asch conducted workshops at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association for college and university professors on the use of ethnographic film in teaching anthropology.