How to Pay Attention

(Cross-listed as FMS 109 and STS 189.) Collective investigation of attention as a sociocultural phenomenon. Reading-, writing-, and discussion-intensive seminar, supplemented by experimental exercises in and out of class. Topics include information overload, distraction, boredom, enchantment, expertise, social media, attention economies and ecologies, attention deficits and surpluses, and ideologies of attention in politics, education, and ethnographic fieldwork. Recommendations: Junior standing and one sociocultural anthropology course, or permission of instructor.