Weekly Schedule of Readings and Discussion Topics -- Spring 2013
Additional materials such as study questions, handouts, supplementary readings, etc. will be made available online through the links below.
Required readings and videos are due on the class meeting listed below. Projects and exercises are due for discussion the following week.
Week 1 (Jan 31) -- Visual Studies and Visual Culture
Required Reading
> Timothy Quigley, Course Introduction [PDF]Assignment for Next Week
> The Familiar and the Unfamiliar [PDF]
Week 2 (Feb 7) -- Eye and Mind
Required Reading
> Oliver Sacks, “The Mind’s Eye: What the Blind See” [PDF]Required Viewing
> What is Time?, Episode 1, Michio Kaku [HTML]Optional Viewing
> Oliver Sacks, Short Videos Discussing Visual PhenomenaAssignment for Next Week
> Riding the F train [PDF]
Week 3 (Feb 14) -- Visuality and Active Seeing: Why visual perception is not like photography.
Required Reading
> Alva Noë, “Experience and Experiment in Art” [PDF]
> Alva Noë, Excerpt from Action in Perception [PDF]Required Viewing
> Fabric: What is Space?, Episode 1, Brian Greene [HTML]Supplementary Materials
> Slide Presentation: Perception [HTML]
Required Reading
John Berger, Ways of Seeing [7-81]Supplementary Materials
TBA
Week 6 (Mar 7) -- Another Way of TellingRequired Reading
John Berger, Ways of Seeing [83-155]Supplementary Materials
TBA
Required Reading
John Berger, "Appearances" [PDF]
Week 7 (Mar 14) -- Into the Digital, Of Pixels and Paradox
Required Reading
Fred Ritchin, After Photography, Chapters 1 & 2Presentations
Into the Digital
Of Pixels and Paradox
Week 8 (Mar 21) -- From Zero to One, Mosaic Connections
Required Reading
Fred Ritchin, After Photography, Chapters 3 & 4Presentations
From Zero to One
Mosaic Connections
Week 9 (Apr 4) -- Image, War, Legacy; Beginning the Conversation
Required Reading
Fred Ritchin, After Photography, Chapters 5 & 6Presentations
Image, War, Legacy
Beginning the Conversation
Week 10 (Apr 11) -- The Social Photograph, Toward a Hyperphotography
Required Reading
Fred Ritchin, After Photography, Chapters 7 & 8Presentations
The Social Photograph
Toward a Hyperphotography
Week 11 (Apr 18) -- Of Synthetics and Cyborgs, A Quantum Leap
Required Reading
Fred Ritchin, After Photography, Chapters 9 & 10Presentations
Of Synthetics and Cyborgs
A Quantum Leap
Required Reading
Required Reading
> Center for Land Use Interpretation, "State in Focus: Ohio" [HTML]
> Smudge studio, Interview with Matt Coolidge, CLUI [HTML]
Supplementary Materials
> Sue Breakell, "Negotiating the Archives" [HTML]
> Sarah Kanouse, "Touring the Archive, Archiving the Tour: Image, Text, and Experience with the Center for Land Use Interpretation" [PDF]
> Center for Land Use Interpretation, Texas Oil: Lndscape of an Industry, Exhibition, Blaffer Gallery [HTML]
Week 14 (May 9) -- Blurring the Boundaries and Challenging the Viewer -- Part 3
Art ists and Projects
> Francis Bacon [Slide Presentation: HTML]
> Zoe Leonard [NYPL, Slide Presentation: HTML]
> Tacita DeanRequired Viewing
> Tacita Dean, Presentation at the Tate Modern [HTML: approx. 90 minutes artist's talk and discussion. Note: I've experienced periodic interruptions with the video. The problem is on their end. Some days are better than others.]
> Tacita Dean, Kodak, 2006 [Web-based video version of film]
Week 15 (May 16) -- Blurring the Boundaries and Challenging the Viewer -- Part 4
Require Reading
> Mark Godfrey, "Mirror Displacements" (re/Zoe Leonard) [PDF]Supplementary Materials
> Francis Bacon Exhibition, Tate Britain
> Mark Godfrey, "Photography Found and Lost: On Tacita Dean's Floh" [PDF]
> Oliver Sacks, Excerpt from “To See and Not See” [PDF]
> John Berger, "The Uses of Photography" [PDF]
> Mark Godfrey, "Photography Found and Lost: On Tacita Dean's Floh" [PDF]
> Walter Benjamin, "A Little History of Photography" [PDF]
The Uses of Photography & Images in Contemporary Culture
Supplemental Topics and Readings (Optional)
Postmodernism and the End of Art
> Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text" [PDF; annotated version]
> Roland Barthes, Excerpt from "Rhetoric of the Image" [HTML]
> Fredric Jameson, "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism"
> Arthur Danto, "Introduction", After the End of Art
> Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation"
> Summary of Barthes' Propositions in "From Work to Text" [HTML]
> Jacques Derrida, "Differance" [PDF]
> Rosalind Krauss, "The Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths" [CP]
> Paul Crowther, "Against Curatorial Imperialism" [CP]
> Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control" [PDF]
> Hal Foster, "An Archival Impulse" [PDF]
Psychoanalytic Theory and Surrealism
> Sigmund Freud, "Fetishism" [PDF]
> Christian Metz, "Photography and Fetish" [PDF]
>Timothy Quigley, "Metz: Summary" [PDF]
> Timothy Quigley, "Fetishism and Visual Culture" [PDF]
> Slavoj Zizek, "The Interpassive Subject" [PDF]
> Sue Taylor, "Uncanny Automata: Fetishism -- The Doll as Substitute" [PDF]
> Slide Set -- Hans Bellmer
> Slide Set 8: Surrealism and PsychoanalysisMarxism, Cultural Materialism, and Critical Theory
> Karl Marx, "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof" [HTML]
> Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory" [PDF]
> Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” [PDF]Pastiche, the Abject, and the Monstrous Feminine
> Laura Mulvey, "A Phantasmagoria of the Female Body: The Work of Cindy Sherman" [PDF]
> Laura Mulvey, "Some Thoughts on Theories of Fetishism in the Context of Contemporary Culture" [PDF]
> Timothy Quigleyy, "Explanation, Understanding, Lacan, and Fetishism: A Follow-Up Discussion" [PDF]
> Slide Set 9: Cindy ShermanInformation, Interpretation, and Use of Visual Images
> Linda Williams, "Mirrors Without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary" [PDF]
> Louis Masur, “How the Truth Gets Framed by the Camera” [PDF]
> Andre Gunther, “Digital Imaging Goes to War: The Abu Ghraib Photographs” [PDF]Mark Singer, "Predilections" [PDF]
> Malcolm Gladwell, "The Picture Problem: Mammography, Air Power, and the Limits of Looking" [PDF]
> Timothy Quigley, "Rough Notes on the Truth Value of Images" [PDF]
Last Update: 20 Sep 09