Screening

About The Shaman’s Apprentice

Year Released:

2001

Genres:

Documentary

Metadata:

Directed by Miranda Smith

The Shaman’s Apprentice presents a vivid account of Mark Plotkin’s adventures in ethnobotany in Amazonia and is known as one of the most stunning rainforest films ever made. This film takes us “through the emerald door” into the realm of shamans and reveals the richness of the medicinal lore which is the inheritance of the tribes of the Northeast Amazon. The future of such knowledge is uncertain, as such cultures are as endangered as the forest around them. (Digital Presentation)

Associate Professor David Stronger holds an undergraduate degree in Hispanic Studies from the University of Manchester, where he specialized in Latin American literature. During this time, he spent a year studying anthropology at the University of Quindío, Colombia, and at PUC in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He taught English as a Foreign Language in Valencia, Spain; Verona, Italy; and Nara, Japan, before pursuing graduate studies in linguistics at the University of Durham. He spent another four years in Japan teaching linguistics and English language at Mie University. In 2006, he joined the Department of Second Language Studies at Indiana University and was promoted to tenure in 2012. Stringer's main research area is the acquisition of syntax and lexical semantics with a particular interest in universal aspects of word meaning that play a role in grammar across languages. Other areas of research interest include World Englishes (especially in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa), language attrition (in joint work with Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig), and biocultural diversity (linking language revitalization in indigenous cultures to the conservation of ecosystems).