Visual Constructions of History

Objectives of the course

The course will comprise an introductory part with lectures, selected literature and discussion on the theoretical/historic views of representation, a central part with a presentation and debate on special cases of visual representations (photography, film/video), and a concluding part that will consist of a project. In the last part, students will present their project prepared throughout the whole semester and approved by the lecturer. The aim of the course is to gain an understanding of the role of the visual in modern culture.

Prerequisites

Not required.

Assessment methods

Students devise their own projects.

Course contents

The course is an interdisciplinary approach to reading visual material. Students learn to use pictorial and film material in cultural and historical analysis of social phenomena. It presents an introduction to the analysis of images and leads to greater visual literacy. Although the visual body is closely connected to a privileged view in Western culture, the social use of images as visual expressions of culture and the fundamentals of collective memory had a peripheral role in social history and in the cultural history of communications.

Recommended reading

• Alloula, Malek. Colonial Harem. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986
• Andrew, Dudley. Concepts in Film Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984
• Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981
• Baxandall, Michael. Patterns of Intention. On the Historical Explanations of Pictures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985
• Brennen, Bonnie, Hanno Hardt, ed. Picturing the Past. Media, History and Photography as a Research Method. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1999
• Burgin, Victor, ed. Thinking Photography. New York: Macmillian, 1982
• Collier, John Jr. and Malcolm Collier. Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986
• Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle and other Films. London: Rebel Press, 1992
• Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1986
• Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960
• Lutz, Catherine A. and Jane L. Collins. Reading National Geographic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993
• Mitchell, W. J. T. Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994
• Scott, Clive. The Spoken Image. Photography and Language. London: Reaktion Books, 1999
• Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988
• Trachtenberg, Alan. Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Matthew Brady to Walker Evans. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989
• Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1994
• Williamson, Judith. Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Marion Boyars, 1978