Junior Colloquium: Visual Culture Studies and Violence
AMST 208
Fall 2016
| Section:
01
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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? |
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| 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) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 50% - 74% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Excerpted reading may include:
Susan Bordo, UNBEARABLE WEIGHT: FEMINISM, WESTERN CULTURE, AND THE BODY
Ulrich Baer, SPECTRAL EVIDENCE: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF TRAUMA
Lauren Berlant, CRUEL OPTIMISM
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
Neel Ahuja, BIOINSECURITIES: DISEASE INTERVENTIONS, EMPIRE, AND THE GOVERNMENT OF SPECIES
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 |
| Instructor(s): Glick,Megan H. Times: .....F. 08:50AM-11:40AM; Location: BOGH115; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 3 | JR major: 3 | | |
| Seats Available: -1 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 3 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 3 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 5 | 1st Ranked: 1 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 1 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 3 |
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