Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An in-depth investigation of a selected topic in the history of art and culture.

COURSE DETAILS:

Computer / electronic device use in class: Laptops, cell-phones, i-pads and other glowing, noise-making devices are not allowed in the seminar without prior permission from the professor. This policy is in place to prevent you from being lured into online distractions and to keep you from bothering your neighbor.    

Weekly Topics and Reading Assignments

1. January 6: Introduction  

2. January 13: Visual Culture: Definitions, Issues   W. J. T. Mitchell. What is an Image? In Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986, pp. 7-46.   W. J. T. Mitchell, “Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture.” In What Do Pictures Want? Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 336-356. Lev Manovich, “The Practice of Everyday Media Life” (2008), at www.manovich.net  

3. January 20: Phenomenology   Charles Sanders Peirce, “Ch. 11: On Phenomenology.” In The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Vol. 2. Ed. by the Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 145-159   Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences” (trans. James. M. Edie), in The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp. 12-42.   Michael Gardiner, “Phenomenology and its shadow: Visuality in the Late Work of Merleau-Ponty.” In The Handbook of Visual Culture. Ian Heywood and Barry Sandywell, eds. London: 2012.   Recommended: Amanda Boetzkes, "Phenomenology and Interpretation Beyond the Flesh," Art History 32.4 (September 2009): 690-711.    

4. January 27: The Political and the Sensible   Nicholas Mirzoeff, “The Division of the Sensible” and “Ch. 1: Sight becomes vision: from al-Haytham to Perspective” in An Introduction to Visual Culture, Second edition. London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 17-20, 21-44.   Jacques Rancière, “Ten Theses on Politics.” Theory & Event. Vol. 5, issue 3, 2001. http://muse.jhu.edu/ Elizabeth Grosz, “Sensation, the Earth, a People, Art,” in Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 63-104,    

5. February 3: Histories and theories of vision Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage,” in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Pyscho-Analysis. Translated by Alan Sheridan. W.W. Norton and Company, Inc. 1977, pp.502-509.   Jonathan Crary, “1879: Unbinding Vision.” Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000, pp.81-126.   Recommended: John Onians, with Helen Anderson and Kajsa Berg, Neuroscience and the Nature of Visual Culture. In The Handbook of Visual Culture. Ian Heywood and Barry Sandywell, eds. London: 2012. pp. 607-627.    

6. February 10: Reading Week    

7. February 17: New Materialism and Affect Theory   Jane Bennett. “A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism.” In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Diana Cole and Samantha Frost, eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 47-69.   Tim Ingold, "Materials Against Materiality," In Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (Routledge: 2011), 19-32.   Recommended Lauren Berland, “Cruel Optimism,” pp. 93-117, In The Affect Theory Reader, Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth, eds. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.    

8. February 24: Affect and Empathy   Mirzoeff, Nicholas. “Invisible Empire: Visual Culture, Embodied Spectacle, and Abu Ghraib.” Radical History Review 95 (2006): 21-44. Phelan, Peggy. “Atrocity and Action: The Performative Force of Abu Ghraib Photographs.” Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis. Ed. Geoffrey Batchen, Mick Gidley, Nancy K. Miller, et al. Reaktion Books, 2012. Recommended: Jennifer Doyle, “Feeling Overdetermined: Identity, Emotion, and History.” Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art. Duke University Press, 2013.    

9. March 3: Street Art   Martin Irvine. “The Work on the Street: Street Art and Visual Culture.” In The Handbook of Visual Culture. Ian Heywood and Barry Sandywell, eds. London: 2012, pp. 235-278.   Screening: Exit Through the Gift Shop. Dir. Banksy. Documentary 2010. 87 min. (Cinema 3rd floor, 2:30)    

10. March 10: Portrait Photography   Jaleh Mansour. “Making Human Junk.” In Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism. Meg McLagan and Yates McKee, eds. New York: Zone Books, 2012, pp. 81-94.   W.J.T. Mitchell and others. “Journal of Visual Culture, Special Issue: Obama 8:2 (Aug. 2009).  

Guest speaker: Alison Dean    

Final 4 weeks, March 17, 24, 31, April 7: Presentations of papers