Weekly Schedule of Readings and Discussion Topics -- Spring 2009

Additional materials such as study questions, handouts, supplementary readings, etc. will be made available online through the links below.


Week 1 (Jan. 26) -- Visual Studies and Visual Culture

Required Reading
> Timothy Quigley, Course Introduction [PDF]

Supplementary Materials
> Slides: Course Intro

> Instructions for Setting Up Your Blog Account

Week 2 (Feb. 2) -- Visuality and Active Seeing: Why visual perception is not like photography.

Required Reading
> Alva Noë, “Experience and Experiment in Art” [PDF]
> Oliver Sacks, Excerpt from “To See and Not See” [PDF]

Supplementary Materials
> Oliver Sacks, “The Mind’s Eye: What the Blind See” [PDF]
> Alva Noë, Excerpt from Action in Perception [PDF]
> Slide Presentation: Perception [HTML]

Week 3 (Feb 9) -- The Uses of Photography & Images in Contemporary Culture

Required Reading
Susan Sontag, On Photography [3-82]

Supplementary Materials
> Slides: Photo Archive
> John Berger, "The Uses of Photography" [PDF]
> Mark Godfrey, "Photography Found and Lost: On Tacita Dean's Floh" [PDF]

> Descriptive Analysis -- Due 16 Feb 09

Feb. 16 --Holiday: No Classes

Week 4 (Feb. 23) -- Image and Object

Required Reading
Susan Sontag, On Photography [85-180]
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (“Part One”)

Supplementary Materials
> Walter Benjamin, "A Little History of Photography" [PDF]

> Slide Presentation: "'The Image World' and Beyond" [HTML]

> Conceptual Analysis -- Due 2 March 09

Week 5 (Mar. 2) -- Domesticating Images

Required Reading
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (“Part Two”)

Supplementary Materials
> Margaret Olin, "Touching Photographs: Roland Barthes' 'Mistaken' Identification" [PDF]
> Timothy Quigley, "Glossary: Camera Lucida" [PDF]

> Timothy Quigley, "Summary: Sontag and Barthes" [PDF]
> Slide Presentation: Camera Lucida [HTML]

Week 6 (Mar. 9) -- Structuralism and Semiotics

Required Reading
> M. Underwood, "Code";"Code and Ideology";"Introduction to Semiotics" - "Criticism of Semiotics" [HTML]

Our first set of readings are available on Mick Underwood's website. They are part of an electronic database of readings on semiotics and communication theory. (Underwood created this site for communication and media studies students in England, so you'll notice occasional references to their "course of study" and "subject matter".)

The titles above (in quotes under "Required Reading") are the main sections in Underwood's database that you'll need to read for this week's discussion. There is a handy index of titles on the left side of his web page which help you locate most sections.

Step 1: Click on the link above (below "Required Reading") to go to Underwood's main page. In the middle of the page you'll see a menu. Click on "Basic Stuff" and select "Code".

Step 2: After reading "Code", go to the "Index of Subjects" on the left side of his page and select "Ia" in the index, and then "codes and ideology" on the web page. When you get to the end of "Codes and Ideology", select "Introduction to Semiotics" at the bottom of the page. Subsequent sections in the introduction will be found on the bottom of the "Introduction to Semiotics" page. Be sure to read all sections from "sign" to "structuralism and poststructuralism", then you can jump to "Criticism of Semiotics".

I realize this is a bit messy and complicated. Unfortunately, Underwood's material is the most concise, readily available, appropriate for our course, and free. Let me know if you run into problems. I'm also providing additional handouts of my own that will help us organize the material.

Supplementary Materials
> Timothy Quigley, "Saussure: From Structuralism to Poststructuralism" [PDF]
> Timothy Quigley, "Semiotic Analyses: Some Follow-up Thoughts" [PDF]
> Timothy Quigley, "Semiotics and Western Painting" [PDF]
> Slide Presentation: "Structuralism and Semiotics" [HTML]
> Slide Set -- Semiotics

Mar. 16 --Holiday: No Classes

> Midterm Assignment

Week 7 (Mar. 23) -- Structuralism and Semiotics

Required Reading
> Timothy Quigley, "Notes on Semiotics" [PDF]
> Roland Barthes, Excerpt from "Rhetoric of the Image" [PDF]
> Timothy Quigley, "Notes on Barthes' Analysis of the Panzoni Ad" [PDF]

Supplementary Materials
> Roland Barthes, "Rhetoric of the Image" [PDF]

> Timothy Quigley, "Semiotics: Clarifications, Questions, and Critiques" [PDF]

> Slide Presentation: "Semiotics: Clarifications, Questions, and Critique" [HTML]

Week 8 (Apr. 6) -- Psychoanalytic Concepts

Required Reading
> Timothy Quigley, "Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory"[PDF]
> Timothy Quigley, "The Apparent, the Hidden, and the Conceptual" [PDF]
> Timothy Quigley, "Some Introductory Thoughts on Lacan and the Concept of Culture" [PDF]
Slavoj Zizek, How to Read Lacan
[1-60]

Supplementary Materials
> Dylan Evans, "Lacan: Three Orders" [PDF]

> Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage..." [PDF]
> Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage...
" [Annotated version; HTML]
> Sophie Fiennes, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema [Video]

Week 9 (Apr. 13) -- Lacan and Cinema

Required Reading
Slavoj Zizek, How to Read Lacan [61-120]

Supplementary Materials
> Timothy Quigley, Rough Notes on Lacan and Zizek
> Todd McGowan, "Looking for the Gaze" [PDF]
> Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" [PDF]

Week 10 (Apr. 20) -- Technology and the Work of Art

Required Reading
> Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" [PDF]

Supplementary Materials
> Timothy Quigley, "Historical Materialism: Karl Marx" [PDF]
>
Timothy Quigley, "Schematic of the Classic Base-Superstructure Model" [PDF]

Week 11 (Apr. 27) -- Modern Art and Popular Culture

Required Reading
> Clement Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch” [PDF]

Supplementary Materials
> Timothy Quigley, Summary of the Argument [PDF]
> Study Questions, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" [PDF]
> Slide Presentation, Avant-Garde and Kitsch [HTML]

> Meyer Schapiro, "The Liberating Quality of Avant-Garde Art" [PDF]

> Final Essay Assignment

Week 12 (May 4) --Blurring the Boundaries and Challenging the Viewer -- Part 1

Public Lecture -- Simon Starling, Lang Center, 55 W. 13th St., 2nd floor, 6:30 PM

Week 13 (May 11) --Blurring the Boundaries and Challenging the Viewer -- Part 2

Art ists and Projects
> Simon Starling [Slide lecture at MIT. The sound quality of the introduction is poor, but Simon's presentation is fine. There's also a downloadable version on the page to the right.]
> Center for Land Use Interpretation

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 18) -- 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 Dean

Required 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 18) -- 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]

 

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 Psychoanalysis

Marxism, 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 Sherman

Information, 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