COMM 8385/6910
Wed. 4:30-7:00pm
Alessandra Raengo, PhD
araengo@gsu.edu
The field of Visual Culture Studies has taken shape over the past three decades as a theoretical and methodological shift occurring in a variety of disciplines, such as art history, film and media studies, cultural studies, literary studies, and material culture studies, among others. The specific focus of this seminar is the relationship between Visual Culture Studies and Critical Theory and, in particular, the methods of research that can be derived from it. Thus, more than a survey of the field, the class approaches selected moments in Critical Theory that have framed some influential methodological choices within Visual Culture Studies: for example, the idea of metapictures; the proximity between visual and material culture; the investment in the desires and social lives of pictures, and so on.
The first part of the semester will be devoted to a close reading of some “classical” Critical Theory texts (for example, Foucault’s reading of Las Meninas or René Magritte’s This is not a Pipe; Marx’s theorization of the commodity form, Heidegger’s concept of the “age of the world picture” or the “question concerning technology”), while the second part will offer a series of concrete examples of a visual culture studies approach to the idea and practice of photography, before and after the digital turn.
Given the multidisciplinarity of Visual Culture Studies as a field, the class may appeal to students from any one of its feeding disciplines. The class is open to a variety of projects and it encourages theoretical and methodological experimentation.