This course can be followed as part of the BA specialisation “Media and Culture”
(onderdeel BA Culturele Antropologie en Ontwikkelingssociologie)
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 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 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
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 the exhibition “One-way trip to Holland” (photos by Leonard Freed, 1958-1962) before October 3, 2010. See: Tropenmuseum Amsterdam
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 at Atleest bookshop, Kort Rapenburg 12a, Leiden tel.071-5125039):
Elizabeth Edwards and Kaushik Bhaumir, eds. (2008) Visual Sense. A cultural reader, Oxford: Berg.
Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Peterson, eds. (2003) Photography’s Other Histories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Select readings are available through the Leiden University e-journals network.
Registration
Studenten CA-OS: inschrijving mogelijk via het secretariaat CA-OS, kamer 3A19, tel. 5273469, e-mail: secrcaos@fsw.leidenuniv.nl, tussen 1 juli en 20 augustus 2010.
Exchange and Study Abroad students, please see the Study in Leiden website for information on how to apply for the exchange programme
Contact information
- Prof. Dr. Patricia Spyer: spyer@fsw.leidenuniv.nl ; room nr. 3A23 (Pieter de la Court Building)