Admission requirements
Only the following categories of students can register for this course:
Students enrolled for the BA programme “Culturele antropologie en ontwikkelingssociologie” at Leiden University who have passed the Propedeuse
Exchange and Study Abroad students
Please see the registration procedure below.
Description
In the course Contemporary Visual Culture we will explore the myriad ways in which forms of visual culture and visuality influence and shape social and political processes and the construction of knowledge in different societies. While our main concern is contemporary social formations, we will also analyze the visual regimes of colonialism and anthropology’s shifting historical engagements with visual technologies. Among other things, we will focus on diverse ways of seeing and looking, on issues of embodiment and sensory perception, on current critical appropriations of the colonial archive, and on modes of self-fashioning through (primarily) visual media. A privileged object of attention will be the role of iconic images in the construction of social difference and political possibility. The book Seeing Through Race offers an entry—via a focus on photography linked to the American civil rights movement—into this complicated representational terrain. The final section of the course looks at aesthetics and politics and the social and epistemological possibilities of the seemingly “borderless” domain of circulating images, their multiple audiences, and their effects in the world today.
Timetable
Lectures: Wednesdays 5 September to 28 November 2012, 15-17 h
Location: room 1A22, Pieter de la Court Building, Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden
Assignments:
Weekly AQCI’s due on 12, 19 and 26 September, 10 and 31 October, 21 November
Film reviews due on 7 and 28 November
Museum assignment due on 21 November
Mode of instruction
Total of 10 ECTS = 280 study hours (sbu):
Lectures 12 × 2 hours
Study of assigned literature
Papers / AQCI’s
Film viewings
Museum visit
Assesment method
Active student participation is expected. Assignments consist of:
weekly AQCIs (6 total, of which one may be missed or a fail, no re-dos permitted) – 50% of the final grade
one museum assignment (2-3 pages = 2000 words) – 25% of the final grade
two film reviews (2-3 pgs = 2000 words) – 25% of the final grade
Note: you are required to visit one of two related exhibitions at FOAM Amsterdam . The successive special exhibits on design and photography (ends 21 October) and film and photography (begins late October) are part of a series on the interface between photography and other artistic mediums. Obviously, if you choose the exhibit on design and photography then you must visit the show by no later than 21 October. Should you opt instead for photography and film then you will visit the show from late October on.
Blackboard
Blackboard module will be active from the 25 August and wil be used for posting assignments and other course related information.
Students who have been granted admission must register for this course on Blackboard.
Reading list
Students are advised to purchase the following books. Copies are available through the Anthropology student organization Itiwana.
Elizabeth Edwards and Kaushik Bhaumir, eds. (2008) Visual Sense. A cultural reader, Oxford: Berg.
Martin A. Berger. (2011) Seeing Through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
Select readings are available through the Leiden University e-journals network.
Registration
Exchange and Study Abroad students, please see the Study in Leiden website for information on how to apply for the exchange programme.
Only those exchange students whose admission to this particular course has already been approved, need to register for this course in Usis and on Blackboard.BA studenten CA-OS van Universiteit Leiden:
Inschrijving geschiedt via Usis, alleen voor “hoorcollege HC” en “tentamen TEN”. Bij problemen met Usis-inschrijving, raadpleeg de Usis-helpdesk van de FSW.
Bij aanhoudende problemen, stuur een mailtje naar secrcaos@fsw.leidenuniv.nl met het verzoek om je op de deelnemerslijst van de themamodule te zetten.
Contact information
- Prof. Dr. Patricia Spyer: spyer@fsw.leidenuniv.nl ; room nr. 3A23 (Pieter de la Court Building)