HIST 120 Introduction to History: History in Pictures

This course is an introduction to the interpretation and analysis of visual sources of history. Visual artifacts will be treated as both objects that make arguments and claims, but also as artifacts that preserve evidence and can be used as data. Famous photographs in the history of documentation, such as Crimean War, "Earth-View", and the Abu-Ghraib photos will be analyzed as images that "made history." We will also study photographs forensically, to ascertain true facts about the past. We will also mine photographs from magazines, newspapers, online collections and websites such as Flickr to analyze groups of images systematically. [SS, W]

Instructor

Barclay