Visual Culture Studies and Violence
AMST 208
Fall 2025 not offered
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Crosslisting:
STS 207 |
Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate, 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, crime, famine, and disease shape our understandings of citizenship, nationality, and identity? Finally, how do representations of social difference inform conceptions of violence and their place in the visual field? |
Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA AMST, SBS AMST |
Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Student Option |
Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
Major Readings:
Sample excerpted readings (subject to change): Richard Dyer, WHITE W. J. T. Mitchell, CLONING TERROR: THE WAR OF IMAGES: 9/11 TO THE PRESENT bell hooks, BLACK LOOKS: RACE AND REPRESENTATION Susie Linfield, THE CRUEL RADIANCE: PHOTOGRAPHY AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE Simon Cole, SUSPECT IDENTITIES: A HISTORY OF FINGERPRINTING AND CRIMINAL IDENTIFICATION Thomas Grimes, James Anderson, and Lori Bergen, MEDIA VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION: SCIENCE AND IDEOLOGY Susan Schweik, THE UGLY LAWS: DISABILITY IN PUBLIC Gregoire Chamayou, A THEORY OF THE DRONE Timothy Pachirat, EVERY TWELVE SECONDS: INDUSTRIAL SLAUGHTER AND THE POLITICS OF SIGHT Susan Sontag, ON PHOTOGRAPHY Ann Elias, CORAL EMPIRE: UNDERWATER OCEANS, COLONIAL TROPICS, VISUAL MODERNITY D. Asher Ghertner et al., eds., FUTUREPROOF: SECURITY AESTHETICS AND THE MANAGEMENT OF LIFE
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Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly short writing assignments; discussion participation; visual essay and presentation; final paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Fulfills junior colloquium requirement. |
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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