FS3520: TOPIC IN CONTEMPORARY FILM AND VISUAL CULTURE A (2014-2015)

This course offers as an introduction to what is known as visual culture of science and its relationship with the body in the Western world. It provides students with a critical understanding of issues related to the human body and its status in modern and contemporary society, with particular regard to the representation, production and display of still and moving images/visualizations of the body in between art and medicine. Contemporary art practices and new media will be studied with consideration of their continuities and discontinuities with the visual cultures of the body in the pre-modern and modern period. Students will be invited to produce a visual artefact (a photograph, a drawing, a video, a web page, etc.) in order to critically engage with a key concept discussed in the course and to critically reflect on the medium constraints and opportunities. Methodologically, each week we will be guided by a different concept (eg. anatomy, representation, embodiment, reading/seeing an image, neuroculture, etc.), a new constellation of questions and a new technique/technology for imaging the body (anatomical dissection, X-ray, brain imaging, nanotechnologies, biomedical interfaces), always accompanied by a close analysis of a visual object, moving image or artefact.

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

More Information about Week Numbers

1st Attempt: One 2500-word essay (40%); 1 two-hour written examination (50%); Seminar Assessment (10%). Resit: Written examination (100%).

Students are expected to complete blackboard submissions each week, on which feedback is provided. The essay is completed during the course. Feedback on this work will provided to the student in helping them to prepare for the examination.