The massacre in Orlando was just two days before we sat together around a seminar table in an idyllic New England college town. A massacre of forty-nine people out dancing, celebrating life in a gay nightclub called Pulse. They were mostly young, queer, and Latinx. Gone. Already stories had turned to focus on the killer’s motivations. Was this primarily homophobic homegrown terrorism or the machinations of the Islamic State? We were meeting at Wesleyan University in Connecticut to discuss the creation of the Public Anthropology Institute (PAI) and contemplate ways to use our scholarly knowledge of cultural difference for greater service globally. Given the disheartening public debate in this moment reminiscent of Dickens’ best and worst of times, we were convinced that this work is necessary in the face of such violence and hate.

For too long anthropologists have retreated into the minutia of arcane disciplinary debate even when our knowledge can make a difference. It can be intellectually stimulating and important to turn inward, but conversations among ourselves cannot be the only ones we have. We also need to create work with a larger impact and a longer reach. As scholars who have studied across the global south and thought deeply about geopolitics, poverty, social and economic inequality, racism, homophobia, sexism and climate change, we believe it is time to reconnect with the obligation to produce knowledge that makes the world a better place. As the stakes get higher, anthropological perspectives can make critical, unexpected connections and offer direction beyond the logic of dominant assumptions.

The litany of ills threatening to unravel the fabric of contemporary social life is well known. For example, climate change promises the inexorable spread of disease and super-resistant bacteria, yet many public officials deny its incontrovertible presence. Climate scientists predict drastic coastal and river flooding that will result in major social dislocations. Social and economic relations in the world are deteriorating, with deepening disparities in power, wealth, health, life expectancy and both the ability and inclination to exercise violence. Fears and anxieties over our uncertain futures are producing conflicting and contradictory responses in both progressive and conservative movements world-wide. In the United States, #BlackLivesMatter seeks redress from the injustices of state-sanctioned violence by disrupting narratives and practices that normalize law-and-order profiling of Black and racially Othered youth and young adults of all genders. Simultaneously, there is a palpable uptick in collective expressions of overtly racist, misogynist and xenophobic speech and behavior. In response to a refugee crisis and increased immigration, similar toxic trends are spreading across Europe. Brexit won. Questions concerning definitions of citizenship abound. Each day brings reminders of the global presence of prejudice and terrorism, both homegrown and external. On these concerns and so many more, our insights have both explanatory and enrichment value.

The Public Anthropology Institute at Wesleyan University is being established to prepare more anthropologists to engage multiple audiences on urgent contemporary problems. PAI will hold its inaugural four-day summer institute in June 2017, with faculty members from different universities who each practice some form of public anthropology. Participants will be exposed to techniques for accessible and compelling storytelling. They will be guided in the craft of writing for different kinds of outlets, including op-eds, mainstream media, social media and blogs. Although writing will be the main emphasis, the institute will also address other key media and platforms, including filmmaking, spoken word and dramatic performance. Because risk, vulnerability and ethical challenges are endemic to all public scholarship, ongoing attention to these topics will be woven into the institute’s training approach.

There exists a long tradition of anthropologists who have made their work relevant and accessible to a broader public, but we are also mindful of professional criticisms of this work. Censorious, half-envious tags such as “popularizer” were once high on the dread list for anthropologists who shared their ideas more widely. Now we are somewhat freer to honor the better-self impulse that leads to exchanging knowledge that truly matters.  Still, joining the fray can feel like an exercise in vulnerability, especially when one can lob scornful critiques of the monolithic “media” and its coverage of vital events from the safety of the sidelines. We think the risk is well worth it. With the possession of new crafting tools and up-to-date, substantive information about how media platforms work, anthropologists certainly can and should do better.

We believe in the power of storytelling. Now, more than ever, we need voices that disrupt stereotypes, reductive forms of analysis and fear to see what lies beyond our old, worn out stories about differences that divide us. The cultivation of reoriented voices is necessary to communicate our ways of being in the world and to respond with urgency to the “now.” Hence, we view this project as essential to the decolonization of anthropology. By supporting anthropologists in their efforts to differently distribute and convey our insights, we aim to face our publics and extend the yearning for a politically committed scholarship towards social justice, which is at the core of the volume Decolonizing Anthropology.

The worst of times call for the best responses. We hope to do our part in training scholars to meet the public challenge of engaging in the ongoing debates of these times as we advance our collective awareness and pedagogies. This is anthropology for the 21st century: rich, rigorous and responsive.

The Public Anthropology Institute was convened by Gina Athena Ulysse and facilitated by Melissa Rosario at Wesleyan University. Faye V. Harrison, Carole McGranahan, Paul Stoller, Melissa Rosario, Gina Athena Ulysse and Maria Vesperi are the founding faculty members, and Matilda Ostow is the PAI Program Student Assistant.

For inquiries about the Public Anthropology Institute, please contact Gina Athena Ulysse (gulysse@wesleyan.edu) and/or Melissa Rosario (melissa.rosario@gmail.com).

For the Songhay people of Niger and Mali life is a series of paths that end and then fork off in two new directions. At these forks in the road the traveler must choose her or his direction, destination, and fate. My choices, many of which were shaped by forces beyond my control, miraculously led me to two mentors: the late Jean Rouch, French filmmaker extraordinaire, and the late Adamu Jenitongo, a profoundly wise sorcerer-philosopher among the Songhay people. Both of these men loved to tell stories, the life source of their science and their art. They never told me how to tell a story; rather, they asked me to sit with them, walk with them, and laugh with them. In this way, they said, I would find my own way in the world and my own way to tell stories. They both believed that the story, in whatever form it might take, is a powerful way to transmit complex knowledge from one generation to the next. Like Milan Kundera in his magisterial The Art of the Novel, they believed that the evocative force of narrative could capture truths far beyond the scope of any philosophical discourse.

And yet, like most anthropologists, I was trained to tell—not to show, to denote the social through analysis—not to evoke it through narrative. Following the path marked by my mentors, though, I have often tried to resist that disciplinary maxim. In most of my writing I’ve attempted to use narrative to connect with readers through what Jerome Bruner called the narrative construction of reality. There are many elements to Bruner’s approach. One central element—at least for me–is that narratives can underscore our human vulnerabilities. In my experience, they can bring to the surface deep fears about how we confront misfortune, illness and death. A second important element of narrative is that it evokes the human dimension of our inextricably intertwined professional and personal lives.

Here’s the rub. It is one thing to talk about the important elements of narrative and yet another to know how to express these important themes in our works. It is clear –at least for me—that writing anthropology or anything else is an activity that requires an open-minded and playful approach to exposition, an approach that has no rules or easy steps to follow. To find their way, writers, like filmmakers or apprentice sorcerers, need guidance from mentors as well as a measure of existential fortitude. It is not easy to pursue the truth of our stories, but a playful openness to possibility can sometimes show us the way.

When I’m writing or thinking about writing, which is much of the time, things pop into my consciousness that lead me in felicitous directions. When I sit down to write ethnography, memoir, fiction, or a blog, I move into a different space. When you write, strange things sometimes occur. In the summer of 2013 I read through files trying to find a topic to for a talk at a conference on Anthropology and the Paranormal. After several hours of fruitless perusal, a copy of a Le Monde interview, which I hadn’t looked at for seven years, fell to the floor. That inexplicable event created a perfect storm, or what Arthur Koestler called a library angel, that not only showed me the way to that presentation but also inspired a new book project. During a dog walk, a character from a work in progress “talks” to me, telling me that the tone of such and such a passage is wrong, or that a particular dialogue is off the mark. Staring at the computer screen a distant relative or a long lost friend “visits” reminding me of a turn of phrase that clears a path through the textual thicket.

If we are open-minded and playful, these elements sometimes materialize and can be woven into narratives that powerfully evoke complex social realities. When I sat with Adamu Jenitongo, he told stories to convey the most important lessons of his being-in-the-world. When I slowly read him the manuscript of what was to become my first book, In Sorcery’s Shadow, he told me I needed more stories in the text. I asked him if I should recount his story in more detail. He said that would be fine, but “if you want to tell my story, you have to tell your story as well.” His personal challenge has shaped all of my professional writing in which ethnographic narrative has been foregrounded, in which an attempt has been made to evoke the texture of inter-subjectivity, in which an effort has been made to describe sensuously the nature of place, space, and character. In this way, I have attempted to use narrative to evoke the themes of love and loss, fidelity and betrayal, and courage and fear—central elements of the human condition. Remembering Adamu Jenitongo’s example, narratives can sometimes transcend the here and now, which means that they can be fashioned into works that remain open to the world. For me, that is the scholar’s greatest challenge and most important obligation.

For the discipline of paying attention; for learning from others; for becoming more responsibly aware of inequalities; for better understanding the social forces causing suffering and how people might somehow yet find hope; and most generally, for being perpetually pulled beyond the limits of one’s own taken-for-granted world.

Amen.

This week brought another gift to anthropologists writing in the form of a public conversation between Ruth Behar and Paul Stoller. On February 5, at the Graduate Center at CUNY in New York City, these two pathbreaking scholars discussed their own writing paths and careers, including writing in a range of genres well beyond the “Anthropologists Writing Fiction” title of the event. Take the time to listen to the video of their conversation either in its entirety or perhaps in short segments as you write; these are the sorts of insights and experiences that are in and of themselves writing prompts. Yet another way that listening can be an important part of the writing process.

Finally, this coming Monday we have our next Writers’ Workshop blog post from guest author Sienna Craig. Trust me that her essay on unreliable narrators is one you will not want to miss. For now, though, please do check in on how your writing went this week. Hope it was a good one.