Junior Colloquium: Visual Culture Studies and Violence
AMST 208
Fall 2018 not offered
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Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory |
Course Cluster: Disability Studies |
In this course, students will gain important foundational knowledge of the field of visual cultural studies. We will cover theories of the gaze, photographic sight, film and media, spectatorship and witnessing, museums and exhibitions, and trauma and memory, among others. Particular attention will be paid to issues of power, complicity, and resistance as we consider what it means to be "visual subjects" in historical and contemporary contexts. We will address how different media--from photography, to television, to film, to the Internet--transform our understanding of images and what it means to both "look" and "be seen."
As a primary case study, this course will interrogate the politics of violence, focusing on the relationship between the production of visual culture(s) and acts of individual, collective, and state aggression. We will ask, How have images served to propagate climates of violence against marginalized persons? What are the ethics of looking at pain, torture, and exploitation? Do such images help us to work toward social change or create attitudes of indifference? How do images of war, prisons, pornography, death, crimes, famine, and disease shape our understandings of citizenship, nationality, and identity? Finally, how does the representation of difference--race, gender, sexuality, class, and disability--inform and/or transform conceptions of violence and its place in the visual field? |
Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS AMST |
Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST)(CSCT) |
Major Readings:
Excerpted reading may include: Susan Bordo, UNBEARABLE WEIGHT: FEMINISM, WESTERN CULTURE, AND THE BODY Ulrich Baer, SPECTRAL EVIDENCE: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF TRAUMA Timothy Pachirat, EVERY TWELVE SECONDS: INDUSTRIALIZED SLAUGHTER AND THE POLITICS OF SIGHT Martha Nussbaum, HIDING FROM HUMANITY: DISGUST, SHAME, AND THE LAW Darius Rejali, TORTURE AND DEMOCRACY Judith Butler, PRECARIOUS LIFE: THE POWERS OF MOURNING AND VIOLENCE Susie Linfield, THE CRUEL RADIANCE: PHOTOGRAPHY AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE Films/television episodes may include: Spike Lee, BAMBOOZLED Darren Aronofsky, BLACK SWAN Gabriela Cowperthwaite, BLACKFISH Michael Cuesta, DEXTER Quentin Tarantino, DJANGO UNCHAINED Lee Daniels, PRECIOUS Lynne Ramsey, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN Kathryn Bigelow, ZERO DARK THIRTY
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Examinations and Assignments: Weekly Moodle Posts Class Participation Two short essays Final Paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments: Class attendance |
Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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