Science, Technology, Medicine and Visual Culture

Description

We are surrounded with images, photos, and moving pictures, yet we have little language to write about how they affect us. The purpose of this course is to learn how to critically read and write about visual power and visual culture by attending to the means of their production, as well as their reception.

Reading, viewing and class participation are 30% of your grade. You must show up and your eyes must be open!

Writing assignments include three short (3-5 page) papers applying the readings to visual media you have witnessed.

The final project is to produce a multi-media, hypermedia, or other visual explication of a key concept in critical visual studies.

Week 1: Ways of Seeing

Readings

• John Berger. (1973) Ways of Seeing. New York: Viking Press.
• E.H. Gombrich. (1982) The Image and the Eye: Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Oxford: Phaidon. (Selections).
• Martin Kemp. (1990) The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven: Yale University Press. (Selections).

Viewings

• Paper Tiger - Donna Haraway reads National Geographic

Week 2: Cultural Codes - Advertising Images

Readings

• Roland Barthes, (1972). Mythologies. New York: The Noonday Press.
• Roland Barthes, (1988) "The Advertising Message" in The Semiotic Challenge. New York: Hill and Wang 173-179.
• Marshall McLuhan, (1967) The Mechanical Bride: folklore of industrial man. Boston: Beacon Press. (Selections).

Viewings

• Louise Krasniewicz (1994) Pregnant Men: The Social Alchemy of Male Birthing.
• Pepsi Ad Campaign - 1950 - 1990

Week 3: Cultural Codes - Film, TV and Race

Readings

• Hamid Naficy and Teshome H. Gabriel, ed. (1993). Otherness and the Media: the Ethnography of the Imagined and the Imaged. Studies in Film and Video. Langhorne, Pa: Harwood Academic Publishers. (Selections)
• Lipsitz (1993) The Ethnic Image In Film (A Course Description) Radical History Review, Fall, N57:182-185.

Viewings

• Marlon Riggs (1991) Color Adjustment
• Marlon Riggs (1986) Ethnic Notions

Week 4: Access and the Infrastructure of Visual Culture

Readings

• Ithiel de Sola Pool. (1983) Technologies of Freedom. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press (Selections).
• Joceba Gabliondo (1992) "The Event Film" (manuscript).
• Reebee Garofalo. "Understanding Mega-Events: If We Are the World, then How Do We Change It?" in Technoculture. p.247-270.
• Information Superhighway Debates (Selected mass-media articles).

Viewings

• ETV
• On-line debates over public access

Week 5: Popular Culture

Readings

• Stephen Heath. (1984) The Sexual Fix. New York: Schocken Books. (Selections).
• Colin MacCabe, ed, (1986) High Theory/Low Culture: Analysing Popular Television and Film New York: St. Martin's Press. (Selections).

Viewings

• MTV
• Talk Shows
• Soap Opera

Week 6: Mathematical Persuasion and Visual Evidence

Readings

• Darrell Huff (1993) How to Lie with Statistics. New York: W.W. Norton.
• Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, (1994) The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. (Selections)
• Jacques Bertin (1983) Semiology of Graphics. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press. (Selections)
• Denis Wood (1992) The Power of Maps. New York: Guilford Press (Selections)
• Theodore M. Porter. (1992). "Quantification and the Accounting Ideal in Science." Social Studies of Science 22: 633-52.

Viewings

• Dumit - Objective Brains, Prejudicial Images.

Week 7: Photography, Truth, and Simulation

Readings

• Tagg, John. (1988). "The Proof of the Picture" in The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
• Stephen Heath (1991) "CNN and the Position of the Announcer." (manuscript).
• Jennifer Tucker (1993) "Visualizing the Invisible: On the Use of Photographs as Evidence of the Unseen" (manuscript).
• Jennifer Mnookin (1994) "The Use of Photographs in Court" (manuscript).

Viewings

• CNN
• Newspaper
• TIME
• Cops (reality TV)

Week 8: Medical Images

Readings

• Rosalind Petchestky, (1987). "Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Cultures in the Politics of Reproduction." Feminist Studies 13.2: 206.
• Valerie Hartouni, (1991). "Containing Women: Reproductive Discourse in the 1980s." Technoculture. Ed. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 27.
• Rayna Rapp, (1993). "Accounting for Amniocentesis." Knowledge, Power, and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life. Ed. Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock. Berkeley: University of California Press. 55.
• Emily Martin (1992) "Body Narratives, Body Boundaries" in Cultural Studies.

Viewings

• Lennart Nilsson, The Miracle of Life
• Nova - The Brain

Week 9: Science and Biology of Vision

Readings

• Richard Mark Friedhoff and William Benzon (1989) Visualization: the Second Computer Revolution. New York: Abrams. (Selections).
• Gregory, Richard. (1981). Mind in Science Chap 12: "Links of Brain".
• Stephen Kosslyn (1994) Image and Brain: the Resolution of the Imagery Debate. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. (Selections)

Viewings

• Our own vision: Optical Illusions as a Means of Scientific Insight

Week 10: Producing Visuals, Project Presentations

• Student presentations.