The Politics of Visual Culture

Transcription

1 The Politics of Visual Culture Rebecca M. Brown Spring 2010 Thursdays 4-6 Mergenthaler 255 AS Overview We will address the intersection of visual culture and politics from a variety of angles, exploring the question from a range of disciplinary frames including politics, international relations, anthropology, art history, and history. Readings each week focus on a different theme and writing will encourage synthesis across disciplinary boundaries, your own intellectual background, and the material covered in the course. We meet once each week; you should two seminar questions based on the readings to me by 10 am the morning of our meeting. I will organize them and we will use them to guide our discussion in seminar. A good question engages the reading and the topic at hand. A bad question focuses attention on the questioner rather than the material at hand. Generating these questions will take time.

2 Writing Understanding comes from writing. Writing is rewriting. Learning how to read and write constitute lifelong projects. First 6 Weeks Each week over the first six will include a short writing assignment that connects reading and writing in order to strengthen both. See the final page of the syllabus for details of these six assignments. You will do four of them during the first six weeks and rewrite them extensively to turn in as part of your final portfolio at the end of the semester. Rewriting crunching through difficult, challenging material to say something clear and meaningful on the other end represents quite a lot of what we do as academics. To do this, we help one another, so you ll also be tasked with peer reviewing one another s work to assist with these rewrites. After Spring Break You have two choices after spring break. You may choose to do three short writing assignments, similar in length and flavor to the first half of the semester. You must turn these in on the day we discuss the topic you re writing about, and then you ll rewrite them and put them in your portfolio with the three from the first half of the semester. Alternatively you can do one larger paper for the seminar. This too will need to be rewritten, so the first draft is due on or before 22 April. The revised product would then become part of your portfolio. This paper would take the form of a 15 page (4500 word), double-spaced, tightly written, thesis-driven analysis of one major issue related to the seminar s topic. You may not merely analyze one reading or author from the seminar but instead must synthesize: bring ideas and readings together to produce something new. If you choose the longer paper, please discuss with me at least by the week after spring break what you plan to write on. For all writing, proper and full citations and bibliography are a must. Portfolio due May 6. To include: First drafts and rewrites of all assignments. First drafts should include feedback from your peer-reader in the form of track changes or an alternative, analog method. Auditors must attend all classes, participate actively, do all seminar questions, peer-reviewing, and at least word essays, two before Spring Break, two after. Lateness will not be accepted. Bring your essays to seminar. No incompletes will be offered. If an emergency or illness occurs during the semester, please work through the Dean of Student Life to assure your semester can continue as planned; she can coordinate with your professors regarding your work for the semester. Politics of Visual Culture Syllabus Spring

3 Schedule Date Theme Reading Task 28 Jan No class meeting 4 Feb Politics/Text Visual/Image Mitchell, Iconology, Intro & 1-5 Choose an Image 11 Feb* Technology, Marxism, and Photography Mitchell, Iconology, 6; Sontag On Photography, Benjamin Work of Art Create a Photograph 18 Feb Photography & Empire Ryan, Pinney, Mathur, Alloula Colonial Photograph 25 Feb Spectacle and Display Mitchell, Breckenridge, Bennett Choose a Spectacle 4 Mar The Museum Luke Visit a Museum 11 Mar Repatriation Davis, Brown and Bruchac, Seligman POV: The Object s Agency 25 Mar Sensation Panagia 1 April Appropriation Grabar, Flood 2009, Wu, [Meister] 8 April Iconoclasm and Destruction 15 April Censorship, Religion, and Exile 22 April Political Movements and Visual Symbolism 29 April Architecture of Aftermath Smith 6 May Portfolio Due Flood 2002, Guha-Thakurta 2004, Eaton, Pandey Juneja, Guha-Thakurta 1999, Halle, Kapur Tarlo, Mosse, Schell, Gere *We need to reschedule our meeting on 11th Feb due to College Art Association meetings in Chicago. Books (in bookstore) Luke, Timothy W. Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Mitchell, W. J. T. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Panagia, Davide. The Political Life of Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press, Smith, Terry. The Architecture of Aftermath. Chicago, [Ill.]: University of Chicago Press, Sontag, Susan. On Photography. London: Allen Lane, Politics of Visual Culture Syllabus Spring

4 E-Reserves 11 Feb Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In his Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, pp Feb Alloula, Malek. From the Colonial Harem. In The Visual Culture Reader. Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed. New York: Routledge, 1998, pp Mathur, Saloni. India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display. Berkeley: University of California Press, Collecting Colonial Postcards: Gender and the Visual Archive, pp , (notes). Pinney, Christopher. The Coming of Photography in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, Photography as Poison, pp , (notes). Ryan, James R. Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, Photographing the Natives pp , (notes). 25 Feb Bennett, Tony. The Exhibitionary Complex. new formations 4 (Spring 1988), pp Breckenridge, Carol. The Aesthetics and Politics of Colonial Collecting: India at World Fairs. Comparative Studies in Society and History 31:2 (April 1989), pp Stable URL: Mitchell, Timothy. Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order. In Colonialism and Culture. Nicholas Dirks, ed. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992, pp Mar Brown, Michael F. and Margaret M. Bruchac. NAGPRA from the Middle Distance: Legal Puzzles and Unintended Consequences. In Imperialism, Art, and Restitution. John Henry Merryman, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp Davis, Richard H. Lives of Indian Images. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, Loss and Recovery of Ritual Self, pp , (notes). Seligman, Thomas. The Murals of Teotihuacán: A Case Study of Negotiated Restitution. In The Ethics of Collecting Cultural Property: Whose Culture? Whose Property? Phyllis M. Messenger, ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999, pp April Grabar, Oleg. The Formation of Islamic Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, The Symbolic Appropriation of the Land, pp Flood, Finbarr Barry. Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval "Hindu-Muslim" Encounter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009, Remaking Monuments, excerpt, pp , (notes). Wu Hung. "Tiananmen Square: A Political History of Monuments." Representations 35 (Summer 1991): optional background for Flood s piece: Meister, Michael. "The Two-and-a-Half Day Mosque." Oriental Art ns 18 (1972): Politics of Visual Culture Syllabus Spring

5 8 April National Public Radio Transcript Taliban interview (on WebCT under Readings) Corbridge, Stuart, and Edward Simpson. "Militant Cartographies and Traumatic Spaces: Ayodhya, Bhuj, and the Contested Geographies of Hindutva." In Colonial and Post-Colonial Geographies of India. Saraswati Raju, M. Satish Kumar, and Stuart Corbridge, eds. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2006, pp Eaton, Richard M. Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States. In Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia. David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence, eds. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000, pp Flood, Finbarr Barry. "Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum." The Art Bulletin 84.4 (2002): Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, Archaeology and the Monument: On Two Contentious Sites of Faith and History, pp , (notes). Pandey, Gyanendra. Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories. Stanford: Stanford University Press, Monumental History, pp , (notes). 15 April Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. Clothing the Goddess: The Modern Contest over Representations of Devi. In Devi: The Great Goddess: Female Divinity in South Asian Art. Vidya Dehejia, ed. New York: Prestel, 1999, pp Halle, David. The Controversy Over the Show Sensation at the Brooklyn Museum, Crossroads: Art and Religion in American Life. Alberta Arthurs and Glenn Wallach, eds. New York: The New Press, 2001, pp Juneja, Monica. Reclaiming the Public Sphere: Husain's Portrayals of Saraswati and Draupadi Economic and Political Weekly 32:4 (Jan , 1997): Stable URL: Kapur, Anuradha. Deity to Crusader: The Changing Iconography of Ram. In Hindus and Others: The Question of Identity in India. Gyanendra Pandey, ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp April Gere, David. How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, Monuments and Insurgencies, pp , (notes). Mosse, George L. The Nationalization of the Masses; Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars Through the Third Reich. New York: H. Fertig, 1975, The New Politics, pp. 1-21, (notes). Schell, Orville. "Chairman Mao as Pop Art." In The Mandate of Heaven. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994, pp Tarlo, Emma. Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, Gandhi and the Recreation of Indian Dress, pp Politics of Visual Culture Syllabus Spring

6 First 6 Weeks Choose a Term or Image Mitchell s book discusses text and image, but as he says in the introduction, it doesn t really analyze images directly. As you read think about how his work helps us to think about particular images how does the discussion of the sublime, for example, deepen our understanding of images often associated with the sublime? How might Chinese calligraphy complicate the issues he raises? Use this essay to make a connection from Mitchell to visual culture you are familiar with of any period, place, time period, popular or high culture words. Create a Photograph Instead of looking at an object already out there in the world, take a photograph of your own, and using Sontag, Benjamin, and Mitchell, discuss how that photograph does or does not demonstrate their approaches to photography. Feel free to focus your discussion on one particular element of their essays words. Colonial Photograph I ll upload to WebCT several photographs of various sorts taken in the context of colonial political relations around the world; choose one of those or find your own and analyze it break it down in order to understand it better. Does it fit into any of the readings discussion of colonial and imperial imagery for this week? 1500 words. Choose a Spectacle Pick a spectacle in the real world not one you ve seen in the past, but one you can see this week. It doesn t have to be a formal performance as the readings indicate, if modernity is staged and constantly restaging itself, then spectacle is what we live in. Think clothing, shop windows, fashion, television, advertising... Use the reading to discuss your chosen spectacle and relate it to modernity words. Visit a Museum Luke s book is all about the politics of museum display. Go to the BMA, Walters, an art gallery or similar and using Luke as an example write an analysis of one portion of the gallery. Alternatively do a broader analysis of the museum overall words. POV: The Object s Agency As objects move around the world they produce their own histories, memories, scars; they leave traces in their wake. Choose an object one of the ones discussed in the readings or another you are familiar with and take seriously the idea that it is an active participant in this narrative. How does that change the historical/political/legal implications for that object? How might it change museum practice to think this way? 1500 words. Politics of Visual Culture Syllabus Spring