Course Decription
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 current critical appropriations of the colonial archive, and on modes of self-fashioning through (primarily) visual media. A privileged object of attention will be on how such appropriations of the archive and self-fashionings potentially challenge Eurocentric understandings of media history, specifically, and historiography, more generally. The book Photography’s Other Histories offers an entry—via a focus on the single medium of photography—into this fraught revisionist terrain. The final section of the course considers the social and epistemological possibilities of new media and evaluates the seemingly “borderless” domain of circulating images, their multiple audiences, and their effects in the world today.
Coordinator
Prof. Dr. Patricia Spyer: spyer@fsw.leidenuniv.nl ; room nr. 3A23 (Pieter de la Court Building)
Methods of Instruction
Lectures: 24 hrs = 36 sbu
Literature : 744 pages = 124 sbu
Written assignments (AQCIs, museum essay, film review): total of 15 pages = 9000 words = 120 sbu
Total of 280 sbu (10 ECTS)
Literature
Students are advised to purchase the following books:
Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed. (2002) The Visual Culture Reader, 2nd Edition. London and New York: Routledge.
Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Peterson, eds. (2003) Photography’s Other Histories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Additional online articles will be announced later on Blackboard.
Examination
Active student participation is expected. Assignments consist of:
weekly AQCI’s (9 total, of which one may be missed or a fail) – 50 % of the final grade
one museum assignment (2/3 pages) – 25% of the final grade
one film review (2-3 pgs) – 25% of the final grade.
The assignments will be posted on Blackboard.
Time-table
Time: Tuesdays 8 September – 1 December 2009, 11-13 h
Place: Room 1A11, Pieter de la Court building
Blackboard
Detailed course information and assignments will be available on Blackboard from September 2009.
Registration
Only the following categories of students can register for this course:
Students enrolled for the BA programme “Culturele antropologie en ontwikkelingssociologie”:
Inschrijving mogelijk van 1 juli t/m 25 augustus 2009 via het secretariaat CA-OS, kamer 3A19, tel. 5273469, e-mail: secrcaos@fsw.leidenuniv.nlInternational exchange students:
For application please follow regular procedure through International Office, or contact the departmental coordinator N. Osterhaus-Simic.