Taungthaman Bo Bo gyi (1): The Guardian Spirit

This oral narrative was collected by the students exploring the word concept - belief

In U Pein Bridge, our group interviewed a second-year law student from Yadanabon University which is located near U Pein Bridge. She shared a story which she had learnt from her grandparents:

“We believe that Taungthaman Bo Bo gyi is the guardian spirit of the village. Now there is a pole erected in the middle of the Bridge to mark his death. It is known as Thet-pyauk-taing .

A Shared Locale: Changing Pedagogy in Cultural Anthropology and Sociology, University of Mandalay (3)

Another female MA student is Ms. Myo Thandar Soe and she began the introduction of cultural anthropology in her presentation.

Learning To Be an Anthropologist (2)

When we went to the field to collect oral histories or stories or experiences of U Pein Bridge, we did not know how to explain our tasks or talk about them. Our group then applied what we had observed the foreign anthropologist do - smile and make eye contact. We adopted this when we spoke to a fried-fish seller who we first thought may know about something of the U Pein Bridge. First, we bought a pack of fried fish with 2000 Kyat before asking her about U Pein bridge. So, we used our money to get data and we were very happy.

Learning To Be an Anthropologist (1)

This was the first field trip for us and there were many new experiences for us. All of us as first-year anthropology students had never experienced this kind of field trip; and we asked ourselves, ‘What are we going to do?’ We motivated ourselves by asking the question, ‘If we are afraid to ask questions, we will know nothing’.

Reflections on Coronavirus

A short reflection from South African decolonial scholar, Prof Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni

U Pein Bridge (2): Learning History Through Childhood Poem

This oral narrative was collected by the students exploring the word concept - belief.

The seventy-two year old father of the fried-fish seller told us the following story related with the establishment of the U Pein bridge:

"I left the monastery long time ago but I remember what I learnt about the history of the U Pein bridge"

အင်းကအော်ညီး ဆောက်လုပ်ပြီး၊ ဉီးပိန် တံတားကြီး

အင်း၀ရေငံ တွင်းဂျီးစော်နံ၊ တောင်သမန် ရေချိုတွင်း သောက်ပါလေ့ ကို ရန်ကင်း ဘေးရန်က ရှင်း

ဘရူရာဇာ (ထန်းပင်) မည်သော ထန်းပဒေသာပင်များ ခြံရံလျက်ရှိသောနေရာများကို ရွေးချယ်ခဲ့သည်။

Learning About Culture from Pagoda's Murals

A Shared Locale: Changing Pedagogy in General Anthropology, University of Mandalay (1)

In (2019-2020) academic year, I teach general anthropology (Anth-1101) to first year students. My idea is to combine the classroom and field trip to show how the concepts of general anthropology that they learned in the class can be connected with "code words" outside of the class room, to begin to show them how to analyze field notes and connect them to theoretical concepts.

Celebrating Identity: Muharram

A procession of Tazias and street performers greet you while walking through the main market road, in Mehrauli, on the day of Muharram. The procession is organized by Auliya Masjid and Bakhtiyar Kaki Dargah situated in the neighbourhood.

Photographs as Memory Triggers

Photographs have proven to be interesting tools to get people to open up about themselves and share memories of their past. For instance, the photo of Anwar posing at Phasi Ghar (execution point) not only got him talking about the monument that no longer stands, but also reminded him of his childhood spent dressing up and posing for photographs at various locations in Mehrauli, Delhi.

Mesha Murali: Bus stand se aage. Kahan?

Humanities across Borders

A Humanist Model of Collaborative Higher Education

Place