Relata Revisited
In Fieldsights’ Teaching Tools section, Alexandria Petit-Thorne revisits Relata, an experimental tool to map anthropological debates by identifying analytical relations between scholarly works. It is built on research by our colleague Rodrigo Ochigame.
As an instructor, I see a few keys ways in which Relata might be used in teaching or instructional support. Thinking specifically about the introductory first-year courses I teach, Relata might be useful in teaching about researching and writing essays because it offers an interactive and dynamic way of visualizing conversations between scholars or schools of thought. The mapping of conversations produces easy to follow visuals of how different papers and ideas build onto and off of each other. I often find myself trying to create graphics that do just that when I teach students how to build arguments for their essays in introductory anthropology courses.