Advanced Laboratory for Visual Anthropology

NSF Grant brings Digital Cinema to the Department of Anthropology.

A grant from the National Science Foundation, Major Research Instrumentation program is funding the creation of the Advanced Laboratory for Visual Anthropology (ALVA) in the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Chico.  Faculty and students in the new facility will use Red Digital Still Motion Picture Cameras to create documentaries spanning the breadth of the field of anthropology. This technology is in use in major Hollywood productions, but so far has not been widely adopted in academic contexts.  The Advanced Laboratory for Visual Anthropology will therefore be a unique facility, unmatched by any other laboratory for anthropological cinema in the world.

Professor Brian Brazeal is the project director on the NSF grant and heads up the Department's offerings in Visual anthropology.  He is an ethnographer and filmmaker who believes that in order for anthropologists to reach the audience they deserve, we must make motion pictures of the highest possible quality.  High production values are essential to visual anthropology's twin aims of producing visual documents for scientific analysis and documentaries for wide dissemination.  Our movies will be made by researchers who have rigorous training in traditional anthropological methods and in cinema production.

We are therefore seeking graduate students who want to use this revolutionary new equipment.  Our first students will be small and will work in close collaboration with each other and with faculty to produce motion pictures of the highest quality.  Students will receive a four-fields MA in anthropology, but will make films as part of their thesis requirement.

If you are interested in applying to this exciting new program, applicants are encouraged to provide samples of their work in visual media along with their application materials.

If you have further questions please contact Professor Brian Brazeal at bcbrazeal@csuchico.edu.

The Department of Anthropology at CSU, Chico offers an MA in Anthropology with the opportunity to conduct and present the results of your research in a visual medium.  If you enroll in our MA program you will study cultural, linguistic, physical anthropology, archaeology and museum studies.  You will conceive and design a research project in one of these fields and you will present it as a documentary film with an accompanying text in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA degree.