This is the (overdue!) second part of a series reflecting on changes I made to my undergraduate course Anthropology for Liberation at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington in 2025. In Part 1, I wrote about what happened when I dropped a book from the reading list, and what a student’s observation taught me about the way that reading lists themselves make arguments about what is important in a course. This post focuses on the three assessments for the course (which I wrote about in 2022) – the book review, the research journal, and the final research project – and the changes I made to each.
Expanding the book review list
To partly compensate for dropping Black Food Geographies from the required reading list (as I discussed in Part 1), in 2025 I significantly expanded the list of books students could choose from for their book review assignment. This gave students a broader range of texts to engage with, and over half of the class chose from the new additions to the list.
New additions are highlighted in bold:
Alonso Bejarano, Carolina, Lucia López Juárez, Mirian A Mijangos García, and Daniel M. Goldstein. 2019. Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science. Durham: Duke University Press.
Byler, Darren. 2022. Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City. Durham: Duke University Press.
Dave, Naisargi N. 2012. Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics. Durham: Duke University Press.
Dokumaci, Arseli. 2023. Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.
Farmer, Paul. 2004. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the
Poor. California: University of California Press.
Fein, Elizabeth. 2020. Living on the Spectrum: Autism and Youth in Community. New York:
New York University Press.
Graeber, David. 2009. Direct Action: An Ethnography. La Vergne: AK Press.
Kirsch, Stuart. 2018. Engaged Anthropology: Politics Beyond the Text. California: University of California Press.
Liboiron, Max. 2021. Pollution is Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mora Bayo, Mariana. 2017. Kuxlejal Politics: Indigenous Autonomy, Race, and Decolonizing Research in Zapatista Communities. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Schuller, Mark. 2021. Humanity’s Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Shange, Savannah. 2019. Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San
Francisco. Durham: Duke University Press.
Simpson, Audra. 2014. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham: Duke University Press.
Speed, Shannon. 2019. Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia. 2019. Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine.
Redwood City: Stanford University Press.
Three students also chose to write their reviews about fictional works: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Tamsyn Muir’s Nona the Ninth, and Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. These reviews pushed students to consider how anthropological concepts illuminate colonialism and oppression in speculative fiction, and how the genre itself can both challenge and reproduce Western ontologies. In my view, this was a harder task than reviewing one of the books on the list as it required students to balance literary analysis with anthropological critique, but it generated some of the most creative thinking about how anthropological concepts travel across different genres and modes of storytelling.
Adding a research focus AI position statement to the research journal
The main change I made to the research journal from 2022 was replacing the group bibliography with an individually written research focus and AI position statement. My goals were to encourage students to start work on their research projects early in the course, and to foster transparency and honest conversations about AI use in anthropological research. AI has had a significant impact on learning and teaching in higher education worldwide and I wanted to address it directly.
The assignment still used task-based grading, and here are the instructions for the new Task 1:
Task 1. Research focus and AI position think piece
Task 1 helps you articulate your research direction early in the research process and establish your approach to using AI tools. This reflection will guide your research journey and ensure you are making intentional choices about how you engage with both your topic and available technologies.
What you need to do: write and submit two short paragraphs (no more than 150 words each) outlining:
a. What you plan to focus on for your final research project;
b. Your position on using AI tools for this assignment and your final research project.
Paragraph A. Research focus
Describe your intended research topic, including what draws you to this area and how it connects to an anthropology for liberation. You might mention specific communities, practices, movements, concepts, or questions you want to explore. Don’t worry about having everything figured out – this is a starting point that can evolve as you engage with course materials and develop your thinking. You can also change your mind about your research focus after you submit this task.
Paragraph B. AI position think piece
After working through the Cultural Anthropology Student Guidelines for Using AI module on Nuku, reflect on how (or whether) you plan to use AI tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, or other assistance technologies in your research and writing process. This refers specifically to generative AI tools as outlined in the guidelines, not assistive technologies you may use for accessibility or disability support. Consider:
- What are the benefits and limitations of these tools for anthropological research?
- How might they affect your learning process?
- What ethical, environmental, and other considerations are important to you?
Be honest about your current thinking – there’s no “right” answer and you aren’t being judged on your response. You can also change your mind at any time. However, being intentional about your approach will help you make better choices throughout the course. I recommend spending up to 1 hour on this task.
Asking students to think about their research focus earlier in the course worked well. The AI position think piece, however, did not quite go as I anticipated. Many of the students positioned themselves as opposed to using AI at all, citing ethical, environmental, and academic integrity concerns, as well as worries about cognitive offloading. We had very different in-person conversations about AI use in class: responses were much more varied, and several students spoke about the stigma and shame they felt in admitting to AI use. This was an important insight that I took into future teaching, and one that Emmy Martin also wrote about in the Chronicle of Higher Education piece on how AI use has become something students police in one another, which can result in students using it in secret.
In hindsight, I think that asking students to write a formal position statement on their AI use, and submit it as part of their assessment, was not the right way to achieve my goal. Students were likely aware that work submitted to Nuku (my university’s learning management system) was connected to their academic records, which probably shaped what they decided to write.
Adding a game design option to the final research project
The last assessment change I made was to add a new, fourth option to the final research project: inviting students to design a simulation or live-action role-playing game and submitting a game design document. I am grateful to Dr Barbara Andersen for the inspiration behind this option; it is based on a game design assignment she uses in one of her own social anthropology classes, and she generously shared her assessment design with me.
Students had a concrete model for what this could look like because, partway through the trimester, we played Tina Ngata and Tāwhana Chadwick’s Good Ancestor Game together in seminar, part of their Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery training programme. I write about that in Part 3 of this series.
Here are the assignment instructions for this new option:
Option 4. Design a simulation game and submit a game design document
This option invites you to put what you have learned about an anthropology for liberation into practice by designing a short simulation or LARP (live-action role-playing) game. The goal is to design a game that brings your research findings to life and demonstrates how anthropological insights can be communicated through interactive gameplay. Note that you don’t actually have to produce the game for this option; instead, you will write and submit a game design document.
If you would like to see an example of an educational game, Tina Ngata and Tāwhana Chadwick released “The Good Ancestor Game” earlier this year as part of their Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery training programme. This public Facebook post has more information about the game and a link to download it for free: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FJsa95LFe/
You are encouraged to discuss your game concept with me as you develop it. We will have opportunities to workshop game ideas during seminars.
Your game should:
- Build directly on the research and ideas you developed in your research journal
- Be designed for 3-8 players and take 45-90 minutes to complete
- Include clear instructions that would allow others to facilitate the game
- Demonstrate how your research connects to key course themes
Your 2000-word game design document should include the following sections:
- An introduction that explains how and why your game communicates key themes from ANTH 302. Connect your game to broader course themes by citing at least two sources from your research journal or two assigned course readings.
- Game setup. Describe the context and scenario. Where does the game take place? How many players? What props or materials are needed? How long should gameplay last?
- Characters and roles. Who are the characters and what can they do? What are their goals, motivations, constraints?
- Rules and mechanics governing gameplay. How do players interact? What actions are possible?
- Structure of play. Outline the phases or rounds of gameplay. What should happen during each round? How does the game progress?
- Ending and debrief. How do players know or decide that the game has ended? What debriefing questions or activities will help players reflect on the key course themes you want them to experience?
- A conclusion that summarises why this game effectively communicates your research findings. Like the introduction, this is the more “scholarly” part of the document where you make connections between your game design and key themes relevant to an anthropology for liberation.
- Reference list formatted using the Chicago 17th author-date referencing style.
Only a few students chose this option, but the ones who did were clearly gamers. Their design documents showed a level of fluency with game mechanics and genre conventions that went well beyond what I had expected, and it was a pleasure to read work that drew as confidently on tabletop and video game design as it did on our course readings.
Reflecting on these changes, I think that expanding the book review list and adding the game design option worked well because they gave students more choice and room for creativity within a format they knew was being marked. The AI position statement worked differently: because it asked students to commit, in writing, to a stance on something ethically and socially fraught, it showed me more about what students felt safe saying on record than about how they actually engage with AI. In contrast, the game design option was a success that I will keep in future iterations of the course. If you have used game design, simulation, or role-play as an assessment in your own teaching, I’d love to hear about it!
Lorena Gibson 