Visual Culture Theory

Transcription

1 Spring Semester 2010 ASTD Dr. Susanne Wiedemann TR 4:00-6:30 American Studies Seminar Room, Humanities Building Office Hours: T&Th and by appointment Humanities Bldg. 113 Tel.: Visual Culture Theory This course provides an introduction to the theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and cultural practices that have defined visual culture studies as an interdisciplinary field. We will work with key texts in visual culture theory and cultural studies as well as with American Studies scholarship informed by these models. Using a wide variety of visual media, including photography, film, television, art, and digital media, we will explore critical perspectives in the production, interpretation, and consumption of images. Concepts and issues to be discussed include visuality and spectatorship, the politics of representation, the creation of meaning in different social and cultural contexts, and the relationship between visual technologies and globalization. REQUIRED BOOKS John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books: 1977 [1972]). Martin A. Berger, Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005). Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007). Patricia Johnston, ed., Seeing High and Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006). Lynn Spigel, TV By Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008). Kristen Whissel, Picturing American Modernity: Traffic, Technology, and the Silent Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). All articles are available on e-reserve, unless a www link is provided.

2 COURSE REQUIREMENTS Attendance and Participation (20%) Class attendance is mandatory. I expect you to come to class fully prepared and to consistently participate in class discussions. Weekly Critical Reading Questions (20%) Bring a completed critical reading question sheet to each class. Be prepared to share your analysis of the books and articles with the rest of the class. Student-Led Discussion (10%) Every student must prepare and lead one discussion (about one hour in length) based on the course readings. Please meet with me by the Friday before class to talk about questions and topics that will facilitate a lively and engaging discussion. Blog Posting (10%) Post a comment on Errol Morris s New York Times Opinionator blog, which reflects on the meanings of photography: Final Research Paper (40%) page research paper on a topic of your choice. Select a topic that engages you and that you feel excited about, as you will have to stick with it for the rest of the semester. What course topic/segment/text did you feel most invested in and enthusiastic about? What topic would you like to explore further? Has any topic made you curious about pursuing a new idea and asking new questions? This project requires you to work in stages (see below). THE PROCESS Step ONE (WEEK 10): Hand in the question your paper will answer Since you are designing your own paper topic, you must be clear about what question your paper seeks to answer. If you are not clear about what the specific assignment question is, your paper risks lacking in direction and depth. Come up with a specific question that your paper will address. Then, compose a series of sub-questions (four) that will help you articulate a more comprehensive answer to your paper question. You should see this first part of the writing process as an exercise in refined brainstorming, when you take the raw mass of random thoughts and ideas and gradually give them shape, direction, and coherence. Step TWO (WEEK 12): Hand in a working paper title, a preliminary introductory paragraph with a thesis statement, and an annotated bibliography Compose an introductory paragraph that includes a thesis statement. This exercise is meant for you to start thinking - and writing - about your topic. Keep in mind that the title and the first paragraph will most likely change as your project develops and matures. See 2

3 this part of the writing process as a stepping-stone that will lead you to rethink - and refine - your topic. Assemble a bibliography of at least five sources. Then, annotate it by adding a short content summary of each source. This summary consists of three sentences; one of them addresses what aspect of this source is of particular use for your research project. Step THREE (WEEK 14): Hand in the first draft of your paper to Dr. Wiedemann and the peer reviewer. Meet with both for paper conference. We will schedule an appointment for this week to discuss questions you might have, the progress you have made, and difficulties you might experience in the writing process. Step FOUR (May 6): Hand in final paper. Your paper must include a one-page letter which responds to the feedback from BOTH peer reviewer and instructor. Please answer the following questions: Which comments were most helpful? Which ones were confusing? What difficulties did you encounter during the writing and revision process? At what stage would you have needed more help, and what kind of help? How did you negotiate through the tough stretches of the writing and revision process? What challenged you most? What was the most rewarding/gratifying aspect of writing this paper? WEEK 1 January 14 Introduction and Welcome * * * WEEK 2 January 21 Visual Culture Studies: Definitions, Concepts, and Debates - Nicholas Mirzoeff, Introduction: What is Visual Culture, in: An Introduction to Visual Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), pp Mieke Bal, Visual Essentialism and the Object of Visual Culture. Journal of Visual Culture Volume 2, No. 1 (2003): Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture, in W. J. T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp WEEK 3 January 28 Theoretical Foundations - Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Toward an Investigation), in Visual Culture: The Reader, Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall, eds. (London: Sage, 1999), pp Roland Barthes, Rhetoric of the Image, in Evans and Hall, eds., pp

4 - Roland Barthes, The Photographic Message, in Susan Sontag, ed., A Barthes Reader (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), pp The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968 [1955], pp WEEK 4 February 4 Shaping Seeing: Modernity and Visuality - Vanessa R. Schwartz and Jeannene M. Przyblyski, Visual Culture s History: Twenty- First Century Interdisciplinarity and Its Nineteenth-Century Objects, in Schwartz and Przyblyski, eds.. The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), pp Jonathan Crary, Modernizing Vision, in Linda Williams, ed., Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995), pp Nicholas Mirzoeff, On Visuality, Journal of Visual Culture Volume 5, No. 1 (2006): WEEK 5 February 11 How We Look: Seeing, Knowing, Believing John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books: 1977 [1972]). WEEK 6 February 18 Whiteness and the Visual Arts Martin A. Berger, Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005). WEEK 7 February 25 The Social Construction of Visual Culture Patricia Johnston, ed., Seeing High and Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006). WEEK 8 March 4 Visualizing the Body, Controlling the Body - Ellis Island as a Photo Studio: The Honorific Ethnographic Image, , in Anna Pegler-Gordon: In Sight of America: Photography and the Development of U.S. Immigration Policy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009), pp Shawn Michelle Smith, Afterimages: White Womanhood, Lynching, and the War in Iraq. Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Special Issue: Strange Fruit: Lynching, Visuality, and Empire. Number 20 (Fall 2006):

5 WEEK 9 No Class (spring break) WEEK 10 March 18 Producing Visual Subjetivities: The Gaze - Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, in Sue Thornham, ed. Feminist Film Theory: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1999), pp bel hooks, The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators, in Thornham, pp Chapter 8 ( Reconfiguring a Masculine Gaze ), in Shawn Michelle Smith, American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp WEEK 11 March 25 Visual Convergences: Modernism and Television Lynn Spigel, TV By Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008). WEEK 12 April 1 Photography as Public Culture Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007). WEEK 13 April 8 Techniques of Surveillance - Panopticism, in Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1995 [1975]), pp John Tagg, Evidence, Truth and Order: A Means of Surveillance, in Evans and Hall, eds., pp Selections from Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, and Peter Weibel, eds. CTRL [Space]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother (Karlsruhe: ZKM and MIT, 2002): Lev Manovich, Modern Surveillance Machines: Perspective, Radar, 3-D Computer Graphics, and Computer Vision, pp Geoffrey Batchen, Guilty Pleasures, pp Aurora Wallace, Mapping City Crime and the New Aesthetic of Danger. Journal of Visual Culture Volume 8, No. 1 (April 2009):

6 WEEK 14 April 15 The Global Flows of Visual Culture - Kirsten Ostherr, Contagion and the Boundaries of the Visible: The Cinema of World Health. Camera Obscura 50, Volume 17, Number 2 (2002): Lisa Parks, Points of Departure: The Culture of US Airport Screening. Journal of Visual Culture Volume 6, No. 2 (August 2007): ***** - Kristen Whissel, Picturing American Modernity: Traffic, Technology, and the Silent Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). WEEK 15 April 22 Us and Them : Representations of the Other - Chapters Three and Four, in Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp Timothy Mitchell, Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order, in Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed., The Visual Culture Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp WEEK 16 April 29 Paper Workshop and Conclusions 6