FS1506: INTRODUCTION TO VISUAL CULTURE (2014-2015)

What is Visual Culture? Over the last twenty years, the visual landscape has become digital, virtual, viral, and global. The image-as-object has disintegrated. The theatre-as-architecture has collapsed. Visual media have been mixed and re-mixed in the museum and online. In turn, a vibrant cross-section of scholars and practitioners from Art History, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, and Film Studies have responded, not only engaging contemporary image production and consumption, but also the foundations of visual knowledge: What is an image? What is vision? How and why do we look, gaze, and spectate? From the nomadic pathways of the digital archive to the embodied look that looks back, this course will introduce students to the key concepts and theories that shape this fluid field. We will engage film, video and mixed media from across the twentieth and twenty-first century, and texts by key theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Frederic Jameson, Donna Haraway and Jean Baudrillard.

This is a compulsory course for entry into the Honours Film and Visual Culture programme.

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

View FS1506 Timetable

More Information about Week Numbers

1st Attempt: Two 1,500-2,000 word essays (80%); Tutorial Assessment (20%).

Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%).

Short writing assignments will be submitted and discussed in tutorial groups.

Written and/or oral feedback will be offered on short tutorial assignments (see above) and essays.

None.