CUSAS Workshop with Prof. Roxanne Varzi (University of California, Irvine)

CUSAS Workshop with Prof. Roxanne Varzi (University of California, Irvine)Murderous Methods: Multimodal anthropology in story form

Why would an anthropologist turn to Murderous Methods to impart anthropological research? In this talk, Prof. Roxanne Varzi (University of California, Irvine) will read from and speak about her two mystery novels: Death in a Nutshell: An Anthropology Whodunnit and Silent Scream: A Nordic Non-Noir. She will discuss the series as a whole and her broader approach to anthropology through crime fiction. Blending detective storytelling with anthropological theory, fieldwork, and questions of method, her work challenges conventional academic writing while opening new and imaginative ways of thinking, researching, and communicating anthropology. The conversation will explore how narrative can function as scholarship, and as a pedagogical tool — and how the murder mystery genre can offer a powerful framework for anthropological inquiry.

 

Roxanne Varzi is a writer, artist, filmmaker, playwright, dyslexia ally and Full Professor of Anthropology and Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University and was the first Fulbright scholar to Iran since the Revolution. She is known for her work as a multi-modal anthropologist. Her short stories have appeared in the New York Press and Anthropology and Humanism, for which she won a first place short fiction award, and in three anthologies of Iranian-American writing. These stories have been anthologised in four books of Iranian-American writing. Her multi-media sound and video projects, Whole World Blind, No Wings to Fly to God and Salton Sublime address war and climate change. Her first play, Splinters of a Careless Alphabet, about French philosopher Henry Corbin and the Iranian Revolution is being developed as a graphic novel, and her second play, Yalda: an Iranian Twelfth Night, was directed by Eli Simon in a reading at the New Swan Shakespeare Center at UCI. She is known for her work as a multi-modal anthropologist and has given workshops and spoken all over the world on her work as well as on research design. Her latest innovation is the Armchair Anthropology Murder Mystery Series that teaches anthropology and features a protagonist with dyslexia and ADHD – because in an era of fake news, a little anthropology goes a long way.