Course Syllabus
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Lecture Series on the Course Pack Session 1 Introduction to the Seminar
An Introduction to visual Culture (Mirzoeff)
Introduction: What is visual culture. Visualizing, visual power, visual pleasure, visuality, culture, everyday life.
Part One: Visuality
Picture Definition, Line, Color, Vision. Perspectives, disciline and color, normalizing color and color blindness, light over color, white, coda.
Session 2 Part One: Visuality
Chapter Two: The Age of photography. Death of painting, the birt of the democratic image, death and photography, from photo noir to post photography,
Chapter Three: Virtuality. Interfaces with virtuality, virtuality goes global, telesublime, virual reality, virtual reality and everyday life, virtual identiy, net life, more pixels anyone, virual bodies.
Session 3 Part Two: Culture
Chapter Four: Transculture: From Kongo to Congo. Inventing the heart of darkness, resistance through ritual, cultural memory, new visuals from the Congo
Chapter Five: Seeing Sex. Fetishizing the gaze, from inversion to opposites and ambiguity, seeing female sex, mixing and the cultural politics of race and reproduction, queering the gaze.
Chapter Six: First Contact: From Independence Day to 1942 and Millenium. Enter the extraterrestials, the return of the empire, aliens as evil, trekking, tv past and presnt.
Chapter Seven: Diana's death: Gender, photography, and the inauguration of global visual culture. Popularity and cultural studies, photography and the princess, pictures in India, the celebrity function, flags and the maiden, the sign of new Britain, pixel planet.
Coda: Fire.
Readings on Black Board: These have to do with how visual syntax and visual morphology are used in cognitive visual space across cultural traditions. The examples are from cosmological visual metaphors. Each discusses mythological foundations and how they are incorporated into a graphic presentation as a cultural visual metaphor. The articles are to be found in BB.
The Metaphor of the Middle Earth - The Nordic Runes and their Cosmology
The Metaphor of the Rising Sun - Earth Astronomy and the Visual Metaphor of Archeastronomy
Metaphor of Involution and Evolution: The Cosmic Parade of Life
The Metaphor of the Seven Arrows - The Medicine Wheel
Session 4 Student Driven Classroom Presentations from the assigned reader.
Seminar Series on Selected articles in the Reader Session 5 Group I
Session 6 Group II
Session 7 Group III
Session 8 Group IV
Session 9 March 15 No Class - Spring Break Session 10 Interviews on Final Paper Project Sesssion 11 Interviews on Final Paper Project Session 12 Overview and Open Discussion Period Session 13 Summation and Open Discussion Period Final Paper Final Paper Due - Posted on Blackboard
The final paper must be around 15 pages or more, single-spaced, 12 size font, and may include graphics, audio files, video files, web links, and other hyperlink technology. Appendices recommended for detailed discussions of related areas of analysis and discussion. Section Headings required throughout the paper.