HU 130 Visual Language and Culture: A Short Form of the Syllabus

Below is a refined edition of the copy I passed out in class

Course Number: HU130-1
Course Title: Visual Language and Culture

Class Meetings: Tuesdays, 1:00 PM-5:00 PM
Session/Year: Fall 2007
Instructor Name: Andrew Berardini
Email Address: afberardini (at) hotmail (dot) com
Instructor Availability Outside of Class: By appointment

Visual Language and Culture
Course Description:
The media revolution communicates through images as much if not more than through words. Strategies of interpretation and theories of visual logic are introduced.

Course Length: 4 hours 11 Weeks
Contact Hours: 44 Lecture: 4 hours per week
Credit Value: 4 Credits

Course Competencies:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student should be able to:
• Discuss theories of visual logic.
• Gain a greater ability to translate concepts into images.
• Demonstrate writing skills.
• Explore contemporary society in relation to media culture
• Describe major historical trends in visual art.
• Examine the social and economic function of the visual.
• Translate concepts into images.
• Relate psychological formulations to visual cultural imagery and icons.
• Apply concepts to analyze the effectiveness of visual work with respect to its intended goals and audience.
• Understand and sensitively apply cross-cultural communication skills.

Weekly Outline: This is a work-in-progress and is subject to change.

Week 1: October 2
Orientation
Lecture: Introductions. Definition of "visual culture". Overview of key terms

Week 2: October 9
Man vs. Nature: How do human beings interact with landscape? What does this reveal about humanity and human culture? How does context and background define experience?
Screening: “Grizzly Man” followed by discussion.
Readings: “What is Visual Culture?” “Where the Ghost Bird Sings by the Poison Springs” by William T. Vollman
Assignment: Research the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI)
Presentation: Vollman and CLUI

Week 3: October 16
Lecture: Semiotics
Reading: Excerpts from Roland Barthes Mythologies (hand out)
And “Semiotics for Beginners” by Daniel Chandler (read the first two chapters available at http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html)
Screening: “Sunset Boulevard”
Hand Out for First Writing Assignment
Presentation on the Readings

Week 4: October 23
Lecture: Surveillance and the Spectacle
Reading: Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan, chapter on “Panopticism”: http://cartome.org/foucault.htm
Guy Debord, Debord, Society of the Spectacle,, Sections 1-34:
http://bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/1.htm
First Writing Assignment Due
Screening: “Brazil”

Special assignment: Find a website that “surveils” something or someone. Bring the URL to class, or email it to me. You can find webcams of any sort (those that watch people, streets, landscapes…) or information-gathering systems of any sort (like www.readnotify.com). Look into your example: find out how much it costs, what information it promises, who gets to know about it.

Week 5: October 30
Lecture: Sense of Sight
Reading: “To See and Not See” by Oliver Sacks and others TBA
Screening: “Dancer in the Dark”
Presentation on Sight and Blindness
Midterm Meetings

Week 6: November
Pop Culture: Advertising, Television, and Subculture
Readings:
E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction by David Foster Wallace (hand out)
“Why Study Advertising?” http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/hzi9403.html
Screening: “Network”

Week 7: November 6

Lecture: On Photography
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), Part One, pp. 3-60.
A short biography of Barthes, for orientation, is at:
http://pratt.edu/~arch543p/help/Barthes.html
Screening: TBA
Presentation on the Reading

Week 8: November 23
Lecture: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
Reading: Laura Mulvey “
Screening: “Rear Window”
Presentation on the Reading
Hand Out For Final Assignment

Week 9: Novemeber 27
Lecture: Art & Politics
Read “,"The deluge," and "Hiroshima" and "The White Bird" by John Berger and others TBA
Screening: “Wag the Dog”
Presentation on the Reading

Week 10: December 4.
Lecture: Science and Technology
Steve Nadis, “Science for Art’s Sake,” Nature 407 (12 October 2000): 668-70.
W. Wayt Gibbs, “Art as a Form of Life,” Scientific American (April 2001); extended version on the internet at:
http://www.sciam.com/2001/0401issue/0401profile.html
Leo Steinberg, “Art and Science: Should They Be Yoked?” Daedalus 115 no. 1 (1986): 1-16.
John Mollon, “Seeing Colour,” in in Colour: Art and Science, edited by Trevor Lamb and Janine Bourriau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 127-50.
Screening or Guest Lecturer TBA
Rough Draft of Essay Due. Meetings on Final Assignment

Week 11:
Final Exam
Final Essay Due
Screening: The Way Things Go.
Final Presentations. Make Up Assignments. Sobbing. Relief.