Related Guides
Explore Parts Unknown
- Explore Parts Unknown CNN has relaunched Anthony Bourdain's Explore Parts Unknown digital project.
Find Films & Podcasts
- Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window Academic Video Online delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning a range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. It includes documentaries, films, demonstrations, and other content types. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- Ethnographic Video Online, Volume I-II: Foundational Films This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. I-II: Foundational Films contains classic and contemporary ethnographies, documentaries and shorts from every continent, providing teachers visual support to introduce and contextualize hundreds of cultural groups and practices around the world.
- Ethnographic Video Online, Volume III: Indigenous Voices This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. III: Indigenous Voices contains documentaries, feature films and shorts made by and for indigenous people and communities. Topics are simultaneously local and global, with particular emphasis on the human effects of climate change, sustainability, indigenous and local ways of interpreting history, cultural change, and traditional knowledge and storytelling.
- Ethnographic Video Online, Volume IV: Festivals and Archives This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. IV: Festivals and Archives contains award-winning titles from contemporary ethnographic film festivals. The collection also includes field recordings and edited films by students and faculty from universities and institutions around the world, including Berkeley Media and Manchester's Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology.
- Ethnographic Video Online, Royal Anthropological Institute Teaching Edition This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Royal Anthropological Institute Teaching Edition contains a curriculum-aligned collection of videos and segments curated to support the teaching of introductory anthropology courses. Each video and segment within this collection are accompanied by a teaching guide providing background information, lesson plans, and classroom exercises and activities.
- BU Libraries Search (BULS) This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of academic material provided by the library. The material covered by the search includes books, journals, scores, video and audio recordings, and other physical items held by the library. The search also covers ebooks and ejournals owned by the library, as well as online material provided by the library from a variety of sources.
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window Kanopy is a provider of documentaries, training films, and theatrical releases available as streaming video. Clips from the videos can be embedded in presentations or shown in class. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
Podcasts
- AnthroDish AnthroDish is a weekly podcast about the connections between food, culture, and identity through an anthropological lens. Each week a new guest joins me to discuss a food-related topic that relates to their expertise or experience.
- Around the Table: Food Stories from Science to Everyday Life Around the Table is a podcast from Stanley Ulijaszek, Professor of Human Ecology at the University of Oxford and Director of UBVO, and Dr. Tess Bird, an anthropologist of household uncertainty and wellbeing, and Mellon Fellow at Wesleyan University. We interview nutrition, food, and health experts as well as everyday households from around the world, filling in some of the gaps between scientific knowledge and everyday practice.
- Point of Origin Point of Origin, the podcast and the notion is about deepening our understanding by going to the source. Each week we travel to a new place in the world to explore where the things we eat and drink come from.
- Anthropologist on the Street: Free Food in the Corporate World Anthropology Candidate Jesse Dart works at the intersection of business anthropology and the anthropology of food. Mr. Dart researches how and why tech companies offer their employees free food.
Browse Films
- Maharajah Burger (streaming, Ethnographic Video Online) This film takes a wry look at the cultural confrontation of East and West, as reflected in attitudes towards the cow. In India, the cow is revered and cared for well beyond its prime. We see a hospice where cows spend their last days in comfort. When the BBC reports on the mass slaughter of cows due to mad cow disease, the Indians are appalled. One suggests that the British send their sick and old cows to India for caretaking. When McDonald's opened up in New Delhi, featuring the Maharajah Burger, there was outrage at this affront. To many Indians it is a symbol of Western cultural imperialism -- Western greed undermining traditional values in India. One elderly maharajah hopefully observes that the Indian culture has survived thousands of years and will not succumb to this latest onslaught.
- A World of Food: Tastes & Taboos in Different Cultures (streaming, Academic Video Online) What's delicious? What's disgusting? What's even edible in the first place? These questions may seem simple, but they tap into powerful cultural, religious, and individual differences.
- Food Music Feelings: Identity in an Italian Market (streaming, Academic Video Online) This documentary, by ethnographer Jay Sokolovsky, is about identity in an Italian market
- Salt Harvesters of Ghana (streaming, Academic Video Online) This starkly beautiful film exemplifies the burden borne by African women to survive and support their families. The Ghanaian women who live on a lagoon in Ada, mine for salt with their bare hands during the three month-long dry season. Ankle deep in brackish water, they bend, scoop, bag and tote the raw salt, often developing sores and swellings. But they are happy to have this seasonal work and their indomitable spirit shines through. They boast that the men would not be as skillful in collecting and cleaning the salt. Their families depend on the meager income from the sale of salt to provide food and clean water.
- Potato Planters (streaming, Kanopy) An Aymara family plants potatoes, prepares and eats a meal, and discusses the religious and astronomical forces that control their destiny. The stark routine of this typical planting day contrasts with thecomplexity of their beliefs.
- Sweet Sorghum (streaming, Academic Video Online) In Sweet Sorghum we are introduced to the filmmaker's daughter, Rosie, (now in her early twenties) as she reflects on her childhood spent among the Hamar herdsmen, an isolated people of southwestern Ethiopia. We learn about the important role sorghum plays in the Hamar diet, how the sorghum is harvested and the different ways it can be prepared. The practicality of the design of cooking utensils is shown.
- Soul Food Junkies (streaming, Kanopy) Award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt offers a fascinating exploration of the soul food tradition, its relevance to black cultural identity, and its continuing popularity despite the known dangers of high-fat, high-calorie diets. Inspired by his father's lifelong love affair with soul food even in the face of a life-threatening health crisis, Hurt discovers that the relationship between African-Americans and dishes like ribs, grits, and fried chicken is deep-rooted and culturally based. At the same time, he moves beyond matters of culture and individual taste to show how the economics of the food industry have combined with socioeconomic conditions in predominantly black neighborhoods to dramatically limit food choices
- Animals by the Millions (streaming, Academic Video Online) The Inuits are the guardians and hunters of the largest herd of wild land mammals in the world. Some one millions caribous roam the banks of the George and Feuilles Rivers, migrating thousand of kilometres to forage for food. We follow their migration, and look at efforts to domesticate caribou and raise them commercially. We talk to a scientist who has studied the worrying spread of chemical pollutants in the food chain into the tissues of marine animals, like the Beluga, that are consumed by the Inuits.
- Garlic is as good as ten mothers (streaming, Kanopy) In this love letter to "the stinking rose," documentarian Les Blank interviews garlic fanatics of all stripes, from cooks to members of garlic appreciation societies. The film, (a lip-smacking foray into the history, consumption, cultivation and culinary/curative powers of Garlic) features internationally renowned chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and a flavorful musical soundtrack.
