Week 1: Defining Visual Culture (slides and notes)

• Jan 4:   Introductory Class
• Jan 6:
  • Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, "Introduction" and "Ch 1: Images, Power, and Politics," in Practices of Looking

Further Reading (not required):
Andrew Ross, "Poll Stars" http://www.diacenter.org/km/ross.html

Visual Resources: Komar and Melamid, Most Wanted Paintings
Joseph Albers' Color theory Exercises: http://www.marilynfenn.com/color_study.html

Week 2: Reading Images (slides and notes)

• Jan11: NOTE if you didn't get the password for the protected links on this site, please email me and I'll send it to you. You won't be able to link to some of the readings, images or other resources without it.
  • Roland Barthes, "Rhetoric of the Image" (e-reserves) Panzani image
  • Roland Barthes, "The Photographic Message"
• Jan 13:
  • Sturken and Cartwright, "Ch 2: Viewers Make Meaning,"
  • Article about Abu Ghraib photo exhibit: http://www.thebrooklynrail.org/spotlight/jan05/abughraib.html
  • Visual Resource: Inconvenient Evidence Brochure with images
    

  Further Reading(not required):
  An interesting interview about the Abu Ghraib exhibit: http://www.bombsite.com/strauss/strauss.html
  Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics ,   Ch 2 http://www.newhatstories.com/svaclass/mccloudChap2/
  Stuart Hall, "Representation, Meaning and Language" (Chapter 1, pages 15-64 and associated readings A-E, pages 65-4, in Representation)

Week 3: Power and Looking (slides, and more slides, and notes)

• Jan, 18:
  • Sturken and Cartwright, "Ch 3: Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge"
• Jan 20:  
  • Griselda Pollock, "Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity (part1, part2, part3, part4) " (e-reserves)

Further Reading (not required):
Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient"

 

Week 4: Collecting and Exhibiting (slides, and notes)

(Visit the "Past in Reverse" exhibition at San Diego Museum of Art and view ethnographic exhibits at the Mengei Muaeum. Click here for details)

• Jan 25: We will not be having a regular class meeting on Tuesday because of the museum visits.
  • Henrietta Lidchi, "The Poetics and Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures" (Ch 3 and associated readings A-E in Representation )
• Jan 27:

Visual Resources: Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Couple in a Cage (in Film and Video Reserves)

Week 5 Collecting and Exhibiting (continued) (slides, and notes) | The Multiplication of Images

• Feb 1:
  • James Clifford "On Collecting Art and Culture"

Further Reading (not required):

• Skim: Coco Fusco, "The Other History of Intercultural Performance" (e-reserves)
• Carol Duncan, "Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship"
• Benedict Anderson "Census, Map, Museum" in Imagined Communities  
• Tony Bennet, "The Exhibitionary Complex"

• Feb3: Midterm Review (begin reading for next week)
  • 
    

Week 6   Midterm exam | Circulation and Ownership of Images

• Feb 8: Midterm Exam (tentative date)
• Feb 10:
  • Walter Benjamin "A Small History of Photography"
  • Sturken and Cartwright, "Ch 4: Reproduction and Visual Technologies"
  • John David Viera "Images as Property"
  • Alyson Lewis "Playing Around with Barbie"

Further Reading:

• Vilis R. Inde, "Jeff Koons: Piracy or Fair Use?"
• John Tagg "A Legal Reality: The Photograph as Property in Law"

 

Week 7 Style and Subcultures | Performance, Play, and Aesthetics of Pedagogy

• Feb 15:
  • Dick Hebdige, "Style as Intentional Communication"
  • Frontline's " The Merchants of Cool "

Further Reading (not required):
Constance Penley, "Feminism, and the Study of Popular Culture"

• Feb17:
  • Gunilla Lindqvist, "The Aesthetics of Play. A didactic Study of Play and Culture in Preschools"

Week 8   Image and Identity | Global Visual Culture

• Feb 22:
  • Adrian Piper, "Passing for White, Passing for Black" (part I, part II)

Further Reading:
Nestor Garcia Canclini, "Remaking Passports"

      Visual Resources:   Adrian Piper, "Funk Lessons"

• Feb 24:
  • Sturken and Cartwright, "Ch 9: the Global Flow of Visual Culture"
  • Lisa Cartwright and Brian Goldfarb, "Cultural Contagion: On Disney's Health Education Films for Latin America"

Further Reading (not required):
Hamid Naficy "The Making of Exile Cultures"

 

Week 9 Gender, Sexuality and Visuality

• March 1  
  • Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, "Sex in Public"
  • Nicholas Mirzoeff, "Seeing Sex"
• March 3
  • Judith Butler, "Prohibition, Psychoanalysis and the Heterosexual Matrix"

Further Reading (not required):
Sean Nixon, "Exhibiting Masculinity" (Chapter 5, pages 291-329 and associated readings A-B, pages 331-336, in Representation )

 

Week 10 Scientific Looking | From Electronic to Digital Visual Culture

• March 8:
  • Sturkin and Cartwright, "Ch 8: Scientific Looking, Looking at Science,"
  • Andrew Ross, "The Challenge of Science"
• March 10: Geoffrey Batchen, "Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age"
  • Timothy Druckerey, "Instability and Dispersion"
  • William J Mitchell, "Intention and Artifice" from The Reconfigured Eye

Further Reading (not required):
William J Mitchell, "How to Do Things with Pictures"
Lev Manovich, "What is Digital Cinema?"

Final Exam: Date TBA (in class exam, scheduled during finals week March 14-19)