FAMS 275 World Pictures-Visual Studies and Media Cultures

What is an image? What is vision? How and why do we look, gaze, and spectate? This course aims to introduce students to global Visual Studies, including the central debates and theoretical frameworks that inform the field, along with the contemporary media formations that have motivated its development. Students will learn to analyze images and media using a set of critical tools and concepts (e.g., the gaze, interpellation, embodiment, circulation, commodity fetishism, objectivity, the archive, biopower, the anthropocene, post-humanism, etc.) and consider the role that images and media play in constructing categories of racial, sexual, ethnic, geographic, and biological difference. Finally, this course will challenge students to consider the stakes of disciplinary boundaries and interdisciplinary thought. [H]

Prerequisite

FAMS 101 or permission of instructor

Instructor

Groo