Note: Schedule is subject to change. Please see the class Moodle for updates. On average you are expected to read a mix of three chapters/articles per week. Some weeks feature shorter articles, so more are included. When readings are longer or complex, there are fewer readings.
Pt. I: Overview, introduction
Week 1: Intro: Image maps, image ecologies
How to see the world (Introduction)
Introduction (pp. 1-16), The Cinematic Footprint (Nodia Bozalk)
"We Aren't the World," Pacific Standard
Week 2: Images, Power, Politics and identity
The Work of Representation, Stuart Hall (Ch. 1 Representation)
How to See the World (chpts. 1-2)
Pt. II: Visual Regimes
Week 3: Viewing strategies and ethics
The Work of Representation, Stuart Hall (Ch. 1 Representation)
How to See the World (chpts. 1-2)
Week 4: Visual literacy, realism, perspective
Technology as Symptom and Dream, Robert D. Romanyshyn (excerpt, PDF)
Ways of Seeing, John Berger (excerpts, PDF)
Visual Literacy (ch. 4, PDF)
Week 5: Modernity
Modernity: Spectatorship, the Gaze, and Power (Practices of Looking, Ch. 3)
Panopticon, Michel Foucault (Visual Culture: A Reader, Ch. 5)
The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (Visual Culture: A Reader, Ch. 6)
Week 6: Colonialism and the gaze
The Spectacle of the “Other,” Stuart Hall (Representation, Ch. 4)
(Re)thinking Orientalism, Rachel Bailey Jones (handout)
The poetics and politics of exhibiting other cultures (Representation, Ch. 3)
Week 7: Postmodernism, Remix and globalization
The world Image, Susan Sontag (Visual Culture: A Reader, Ch. 7)
Jean Baudrillard, ‘The Hyperrealism of Simulation’’, Art in Theory: 1900-2000
Week 8: Image analysis workshop
Part III: Contemporary issues
Week 9: Image culture: Celebrity to Selfie -- The Role of the Image in Constructing the Self
Amelia Jones, “The Body And/In Representation,” The Visual Culture Reader
Lisa Nakamura, “Digital Racial Formations and Networked Images of the Body”
Handout: (excerpts from) Karen Archey, “Post Internet Curating: An Interview with Carson Chan,” Rhizome, 2016
Week 10: Memes and economy of attention
How to see the world (Chapters 7, Afterward)
Week 11: Identity politics and visual activism
Fred Moton, “The Case of Blackness,” The Visual Culture Reader
Lisa Nakumura, “Digital Racial Formations and Networked Images,” The Visual Culture Reader
Malek Alloula, “From the Colonial Harem,” The Visual Cultural Reader
Week 12: Image and pseudo events
How to see the world (Chapters 3)
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, Daniel J. Boorstin (excerpt, handout)
Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman (Ch. 1, handout)
Week 13: Environmental politics
How to See the World (chapter 6)
Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism, Kevin Michael DeLuca (excerpt, handout)
Week 14: Wrap-up
Reading quiz