Academic Fictions

An often underestimated but critical element of academic endeavour is communication. As part of a course on “Cities, Conflict, and Development” that I teach at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, in Geneva, Switzerland, I set my students an assignment that is aimed at pushing them to think about how to best communicate a message. Inspired in particular by the anthropologist Margery Wolf’s famous book, A Thrice-Told Tale, where she presents and analyses the differences between a short story, fieldnotes, and a social science article that she has written about the same events that took place during her research in Taiwan, I ask students to choose an article from the course syllabus, and to re-write it as a 1,500-word short story or poem, along with a 500 words appendix explaining how and why they went about writing their short story or poem. This thematic thread showcases a selection of their very original and evocative work. Curated by Dennis Rodgers.

Dennis Rodgers is Research Professor in Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland, and Principle Investigator of the European Research Council-funded project on “Gangs, Gangsters, and Ganglands: Towards a Global Comparative Ethnography” (GANGS).