Exceptional Experiences
Engaging with Jolting Events in Art and Fieldwork
Published on 1. August 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
246 pages
978-1-83695-082-0 (ISBN)
Description
Looking at encounters that can puncture or jolt us, this volume uses art as a lens through which to register and understand exceptional experiences. The volume also includes the fieldworker's experience of unexpected events that can lead to key understandings, as well as revelatory moments that happen during artistic creation and while looking at art. By exploring exceptional experiences through art, the volume asks probing questions for anthropology. In recognizing that art is all-encompassing - including, as it does, narrative, performance, dance and images - Exceptional Experiences situates itself within a number of conversations on methodological and conceptual issues in anthropology and beyond.
Reviews / Votes
"This is a very well-conceived, multiangled volume, one sure to generate lively discussion and experiment - and that maintains the distinctiveness of each authorial voice while also bringing them into generative conversation with each other." * Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa CruzMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
18 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 152 mm
Width: 229 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
370 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-83695-082-0 (9781836950820)
DOI
10.3167/9781805390206
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Petra Rethmann | Helena Wulff
Exceptional Experiences
Engaging with Jolting Events in Art and Fieldwork
E-Book
07/2023
1st Edition
Berghahn Books
€24.49
Available for download
Persons
Petra Rethmann is Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University, Ontario and Director of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition. She is the author or editor of three books and has held guest professorships at the University of St. Petersburg, University of Cape Town, and Aleksanteri Institute/Helsinki.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Engaging with Jolting Events in Art and Fieldwork
Petra Rethmann and Helena Wulff
Part I: Experiencing and Conceptualizing the Exceptional
Chapter 1. To Be Stunned: Uncanny Experiences and Uncertainty in 'Ordinary' Fieldwork
Deborah Reed-Danahay
Chapter 2. Looking at the African Masks at Musee du Trocadero - He Understood....
Thomas Fillitz
Chapter 3. Art and Anthropology in Graphic Form: Exceptional Experience andExtraordinary Collaboration in the Making of 'Light in Dark Times'
Alisse Waterston and Charlotte Corden (images)
Chapter 4. Exceptional Experiences in Academic Life
Moshe Shokeid
Chapter 5. The Exceptionalism of Art as Disclosure of Deepest Truth: Stanley Spencer and the Look of Love
Nigel Rapport
Part II: Literary Realms of the Exceptional
Chapter 6. Haunted Reading/Haunting Johnson
Petra Rethmann
Chapter 7. Sacred Muses: The Lake Goddess in Flora Nwapa's Literary Worldmaking
Paula Uimonen
Chapter 8. Experiential Literary Ethnography: How Creative Writing Techniques Can Capturethe Cultural Value of Live Arts-Based Experiences
Ellen Wiles
Part III: Exceptional Visual and Practice Experiences
Chapter 9. Lighting Praxis: Lighting Aesthetics and Creativity Narratives in Professional Cinematography
Cathy Greenhalgh
Chapter 10. 'Hammered by the Image': Exceptional Experiences of Art as Aesthetic Impact
Helena Wulff
Chapter 11. Shaking up Worlds, Opening up Horizons: Contemporary Dance Experiences in Ramallah and Beyond
Ana Laura Rodriguez Quinones
Chapter 12. Participant Growing-Places in and of the World: Rendering the Transformative Atmosphere of a Contemporary Opera in the Making
Maxime Le Calve
Afterword: The Sixth Sense
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Introduction: Engaging with Jolting Events in Art and Fieldwork
Petra Rethmann and Helena Wulff
Part I: Experiencing and Conceptualizing the Exceptional
Chapter 1. To Be Stunned: Uncanny Experiences and Uncertainty in 'Ordinary' Fieldwork
Deborah Reed-Danahay
Chapter 2. Looking at the African Masks at Musee du Trocadero - He Understood....
Thomas Fillitz
Chapter 3. Art and Anthropology in Graphic Form: Exceptional Experience andExtraordinary Collaboration in the Making of 'Light in Dark Times'
Alisse Waterston and Charlotte Corden (images)
Chapter 4. Exceptional Experiences in Academic Life
Moshe Shokeid
Chapter 5. The Exceptionalism of Art as Disclosure of Deepest Truth: Stanley Spencer and the Look of Love
Nigel Rapport
Part II: Literary Realms of the Exceptional
Chapter 6. Haunted Reading/Haunting Johnson
Petra Rethmann
Chapter 7. Sacred Muses: The Lake Goddess in Flora Nwapa's Literary Worldmaking
Paula Uimonen
Chapter 8. Experiential Literary Ethnography: How Creative Writing Techniques Can Capturethe Cultural Value of Live Arts-Based Experiences
Ellen Wiles
Part III: Exceptional Visual and Practice Experiences
Chapter 9. Lighting Praxis: Lighting Aesthetics and Creativity Narratives in Professional Cinematography
Cathy Greenhalgh
Chapter 10. 'Hammered by the Image': Exceptional Experiences of Art as Aesthetic Impact
Helena Wulff
Chapter 11. Shaking up Worlds, Opening up Horizons: Contemporary Dance Experiences in Ramallah and Beyond
Ana Laura Rodriguez Quinones
Chapter 12. Participant Growing-Places in and of the World: Rendering the Transformative Atmosphere of a Contemporary Opera in the Making
Maxime Le Calve
Afterword: The Sixth Sense
Thomas Hylland Eriksen