Visual Culture Studies

Course Content
From billboards to tiktok clips, from photojournalism to cinema, from street art to music videos – it has become a commonplace to state that spaces without images have become scarcer in the past few decades and that our daiy lives have become exceedingly ocularcentric. At the same time, we often consume these images habitually and perhaps even without interrogating them.

Visual culture can be entertaining and afford us pleasure, impact who we are or who we aspire to be. It also mediates and regulates power relations and determines who is visible and who or what remains unseen.
Visual Culture Studies is a fairly new trans- and interdisciplinary field of inquiry bringing together methodologies and theories from cultural studies, media studies, social-cultural anthropology, art history and museum studies, philosophy, decolonial studies, race and gender studies and other relevant approaches.

In this course, we will develop a transdisciplinary theoretical framework and methodological toolbox to guide us in critically reflecting on our ‘ways of seeing’ (John Berger).
Our analytical inquiry will tackle questions about the politics of images and image-making (e.g. topics such as visual representation of class, race and gender; conditions for production and circulation of image-making; or decolonial film cooperatives). Additionally, we will also learn how to use creative practice (photography for the visual anthroplogy assignment; and moving images for the video essay assignment) for research.

Course teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2sOFilBxGc


Format
Most classes will be held seminar-style at times accompanied by lectures. In preparation for each class, students will read the assigned texts or watch a film. In some weeks, they will also be prompted to do an exercise (e.g. prepare reading notes or a creative self-portrait, visit an exhibition, analyse a video, etc. ).
There will be ample opportunity to reflect on current debates and practice the application of theories and methods to case studies. Therefore, active participation in class is expected.