ARTH 287 Photography, History and Power
Photographs today are ubiquitous. Yet they are incredibly diverse in their functions, circulation, meaning, and relationship to institutions, personal and collective identities, scientific knowledge, and artistic cultural practices. Photography has the capacity to shape the way we think about ourselves, our communities, our national cultures, and our engagements with a transcultural world. This course is designed to explore the technological, cultural, economic and ideological power that photographs have to shape our collective understanding of our world. This course will also introduce students to key tools necessary for developing visual literacy in our image-saturated culture. Together, we will learn about different photographic genres - exploration and travel photography, portraiture and family photographs, medical and legal documentation, fine art prints and mass cultural forms - and we will explore photography's power to represent personal and collective identities, social and political ideologies, and history itself. Photography, after all, was created in the early 19th century amid rampant Euro-American colonialism and imperialism. The course will explore photography by, for, and of makers and collectives working in and across local, indigenous, and global cultures in North and Central America, Western Asia and Asian-Pacific, Africa and the African Diaspora. Readings will include primary source materials, theories of photographic meaning, and research-based analyses of particular photographic practices within local and global contexts. Students will be asked to grasp both the medium's technological and rhetorical functions, but also to develop their own critical perspective on photography's shifting relations to global visual culture. Coursework will include a hands-on photography project and a museum or gallery visit.
Core Requirements Met
- Fine Arts
- Global Connections