In Search of Lost Futures: Anthropological Explorations in Multimodality, Deep Interdisciplinarity, and Autoethnography

In Search of Lost Futures asks how imaginations might be activated through practices of autoethnography, multimodality, and deep interdisciplinarity―each of which has the power to break down methodological silos, cultivate novel research sensibilities, and inspire researchers to question what is known about ethnographic process, representation, reflexivity, audience, and intervention within and beyond the academy. By blurring the boundaries between the past, present, and future; between absence and presence; between the possible and the impossible; and between fantasy and reality, In Search of Lost Futures pushes the boundaries of ethnographic engagement. It reveals how researchers on the cutting edge of the discipline are studying absence and grief and employing street performance, museum exhibit, anticipation, or simulated reality to research and intervene in the possible, the impossible, and the uncertain.

Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston is Associate Professor of Theatre with graduate appointments in Theatre and Performance Studies and Social Anthropology at York University, Canada. Her book, Staging Strife (2010), was awarded the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry Outstanding Qualitative Book Award and the Canadian Association for Theatre Research Ann Saddlemyer Book Prize (2011). Her article, “quiet theatre: The Radical Politics of Silence,” was awarded the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR) 2019 Richard Plant Prize for the best English-language article on a Canadian theatre or performance topic. She is a co-founding member of the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography (CIE), which received the American Anthropological Association General Anthropology Division’s 2019 New Directions Award in Public Anthropology.

Mark Auslander, a sociocultural and historical anthropologist, works at the intersection of ritual practice, aesthetics, environmental transformation, kinship, and political consciousness in Africa and the African Diaspora. His curatorial work engages with art, race, environmental crisis, gender, and memory politics. He has directed museums of science and culture at Central Washington University and Michigan State University, and currently serves as director of special projects at the Natural History Museum.