Visual Culture Studies and Violence: Junior Colloquium
AMST 208
Spring 2025
| Section:
01
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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, 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: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST)(CSCT) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
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Excerpts from (examples):
Drucilla Cornell, ed., FEMINISM AND PORNOGRAPHY
Barbie Zelizer, REMEMBERING TO FORGET: HOLOCAUST MEMORY THROUGH THE CAMERA'S EYE
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
Kobena Mercer, WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE: NEW POSITIONS IN BLACK CULTURAL STUDIES
Thomas Grimes, James Anderson, and Lori Bergen, MEDIA VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION: SCIENCE AND IDEOLOGY
Elena Tajima Creef, IMAGING JAPANESE AMERICA: THE VISUAL CONSTRUCTION OF CITIZENSHIP, NATION, AND THE BODY
Chandan Reddy, FREEDOM WITH VIOLENCE: RACE, SEXUALITY, AND THE US STATE
D. Asher Ghertner et al., eds., FUTUREPROOF: SECURITY AESTHETICS AND THE MANAGEMENT OF LIFE
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Examinations and Assignments:
In-class discussions, Moodle posts, essay, presentation, final paper. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
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| Instructor(s): Glick,Megan H. Times: ....R.. 09:00AM-11:50AM; Location: CAMS 1; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 14 | | SR major: 6 | JR major: 6 | | |
| Seats Available: 0 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 0 | JR non-major: 0 | SO: 2 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 1 | 1st Ranked: 1 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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