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THE SYLLABUS

Note that this syllabus is subject to periodic updates throughout the semester.. a pdf version can be downloaded at the bottom of the page. Unlike this page, it will be the latest version:

Analytical Seminar: Visual Culture Seminar – IMA 700.00

Spring 2023 • Time: Thursday 6:00 – 8:50PM

Instructor: Martin Lucas. email: mluc@hunter.cuny.edu

Office hours by Appointment

DESCRIPTION:

The seminar is a research-oriented critical exploration of visual culture – how images work, and what they do – across media, time periods and critical approaches. Students will be asked to create a research paper on a topic of their own choosing while sharing presentations of readings drawn from a variety of disciplinary frames including art history, media studies, critical theory, and cultural studies, designed to give students a broad overview of useful tools for thinking about the visual world. 

At the core of the seminar is the idea of self-directed research. Each student will create a Visual Culture project of their own choosing; typically in the form of a research paper some 15 to 30 pages in length including a bibliography and a paper in draft and final versions. These topics will be discussed and approaches shared. Each participant will also make a presentation to the group based on one or more of the readings. 

The seminar will ask participants what the engagement with thought and action means to them. What are good questions? Useful answers? What are the implications of the forms of storytelling you choose to use or eschew? Who you are as a media maker? What do teaching and learning constitute in an “Information Age?”

READING: approximately 2 articles per week by authors including W.T.J. Mitchell, bell hooks, Teddy Cruz, Marita Sturken, Isaac Julien, Brian Massumi and more. We will also screen films, both synchronously and asynchronously, and look at a variety of art both historical and contemporary.

The Fall 2021 seminar will be online, and the lecture portion will be synchronous and participatory. There will be other material to be viewed, some lectures and some films.

OUTCOMES – Students in this seminar will develop: 

• Broad familiarity with visual culture theories, including developments in art history, media studies, and history of thought around cinema and photography. 
• Ability to develop an idea from scratch, synthesize info, and develop a research plan with specific outcome.
• Ability to read analytically and offer a concise understanding of complex material in the arts.

No Prerequisites. Open to matriculated students in the Integrated Media Arts Program at Hunter College, or by permission of Instructor.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

Each student will create a Visual Culture Project of their own choosing. Each student will develop a research topic, a bibliography and a long paper in draft and final versions, based on that research. These topics will be discussed and approaches shared. Each participant will also make one presentation to the group based on one or more of the readings. They will also make a short presentation on an artist of their choice.

READINGS: We are using Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Visual Culture Reader, 3^nd. Ed. (New York, Routledge, 2012.) as a jumping off point. There will be pdf’s of articles, and the reading may be added to or altered in a timely fashion. Each participant is expected to read the articles in question before the class and be ready to discuss. You will find handouts and readings on the class website. You may be asked to annotate the readings. We will also screen films, both synchronously and asynchronously, and look at a variety of art both historical and contemporary.

WEBSITE: The website is https://wordpress.com/view/imavisualculture2019.home.blog. Lecture segments in slide form and reading materials will be available on this website. Other materials, e.g. film segments, will be found either on the Critical Commons website (criticalcommons.org) or on vimeo and you should see links on the site. (Sorry about the date on the site, but if you go to it you’ll see it is updated.)

ATTENDANCE: Attendance is required, as is timely completion of assignments. If you have any schedule conflict, please let me know in advance. You will be expected to have already read articles to participate in class discussion in a meaningful way.

SCHEDULE:

Module 1: Theoretical Underpinnings of Visuality & A Contemplation of Pedagogy

Week 1 – January 26

Lecture: Seeing Seeing: Defining Visual Culture – The first seminar will explore two related issues:What does a liberatory pedagogy mean for us? What might a study of the field of visual culture constitute?

READING: Mirzoeff Intro “What is Visual Studies” (Mirzoeff001.pdf); WTJ Mitchell “Showing, Seeing” (wjt-mitchell.pdf); bell hooks on Freire. (hooksonfreire.pdf) Additional reading: Freire on Freire

Week 2 – February 2

Lecture: The Subject is a Who – Ideas about the self from several points of view. Plus an intro to semiology and the cultural study of language.

READING Mirzoeff 2nd ed. including short segments from Marx, Dubois, Barthes.

(mirzoeff2ndEd.pdf) Raymond Williams Keywords “Ideology” (PDF)

DUE: Present research plan ideas

Module 2: Power and Spectacle

Week 3 – February 9

Lecture: Seeing the World: Perspective, cosmology and ideology

Reading: Walter Benjamin “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction; John Berger “The Moment of Cubism” (PDF); Bertolt Brecht Galileo,Scene 1 (PDF).

DUE: research plan idea(s)

Week 4 – February 16

Lecture: Mapping Power/Seeing Change

READING:(Mirzoeff) Teddy Cruz “Mapping Non-Conformity”; Ariella Azoulay “The (In)human spatial condition”.

ADDITIONAL READING: Teddy Cruz “Tijuana Case Study” (pdf); Mona Hatoum.

DUE: research plan draft proposal (be ready to discuss in class)

Week 5 – February 23

Lecture: Technology and Art

READING: Martin Heidegger “Questions Concerning Technology”; Marshall McLuhan The Medium is the Massage; Barbrook and Cameron “The Californian Ideology”.

DUE: Research Plan with bibliography

Module 3: Colonialism/Anti-colonialism

Week 6 – March 2

SCREENING Segments of: Lumumba: Death of a Prophet (1994); Lumumba(2001) Raoul Peck

READING: Burr on the Two Lumumbas of Raoul Peck (PDF)

Additional Reading: “Peck on Peck”

Week 7 – March 9

Lecture: “That Orient: The Philippine-American war as a lacuna in American culture”

Screening: Edison films from the Philippine-American War & Kidlat Tahimik’s Perfumed Nightmare (seg.)

READING: Nick Deocampo “The Filipino in the Imperialist Imaginary”

Week 8 – March 16

Lecture: The Colonial Legacy and Modern Popular Culture

“The Legacy of Colonialism & Modern Popular Culture”

READING: Terry Smith “Visual Regimes of Colonization” (PDF); Linda Tuhiwai Smith “Imperialism, History, Writing & Theory” from Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. (pdf)

Screening: Tarek Bouraque Time Machine (2020)

Due: Visual Culture Project – Outline

Week 9 – March 23

Lecture: Romantic Bodies and Responses to Colonialism: Adrian Piper and Yinka Shonibare MBE

Screening: Isaac Julien Looking for Langston

READING: Isaac Julien “De Margin and De Centre” (PDF) Mirzoeff: Jack Halberstam “Queer Faces”;

ADDITIONAL READING: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/opinion/adrian-piper-speaks-for-herself.html

Additional Screening: Interview with Yinka Shonibare

Module 4: The Gaze, The Body

Week 10 – March 30

Lecture: Technologies of the Eye

Week 10 Nov 1 “Seeing Where You’re Coming From”

READING: Mirzoeff: Georgina Kleege “Blindness and Visual Culture”; Amelia Jones “The Body And/In Representation”

DUE – Draft of Visual Culture Project

SPRING BREAK – April 5 – 13

Week 11 – April 20

History and Memory / Document and Documentary

READING: Mirzoeff: Anne Friedberg “The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze in Modernity”; Marita Sturken “History and Memory” (pdf)

Week 12 – April 27

Lecture: History (Screening) Memory

Screening: Anand Patwardan War & Peace (segment)

READING: Mirzoeff: Sumathi Ramaswamy “Maps, Mother/Goddesses, and Martyrdom in Modern India”

Arnold Benedict Imagined Communities(seg.); Additional reading: Patwardan’s Reason; wikipedia entry War and Peace”; Lucas on missile aesthetics. (PDF)

Module 5: Documentary, Modern and/or Post-Modern

Week 13 – May 4

Lecture: Allan Sekula – Documenting Globalization, Rescuing the Image

READING: Faye Ginsburg “Rethinking the Digital Age”; Alan Sekula Dismantling Modernism (PDF)

Due: Research Presentation

Week 14 – May 11

Lecture “Seeing the Other is Believing: The Art of Walid Raad”

READING: Mirzoeff: Brian Massumi “On the Superiority of the Analog”

Hal Foster “The Artist as Ethnographer.” (PDF)

Due: Research Presentation

Week 15 – May 18 – Research Projects Due

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