HU Credits: 2

Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master)

Responsible Department: Cultural Studies-Individual Graduate Prog.

Semester: 2nd Semester

Teaching Languages: Hebrew

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Dr. Norma Musih

Coordinator Email: norma.musih@gmail.com

Coordinator Office Hours: By appointment

Teaching Staff:
Dr. Norma Musih

Course/Module description:
What is the relationship between a map, a photograph of the earth from the moon and the structure of a prison? They are all subjects of visual culture research. Visual culture is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge that asks questions about visuality and the possibilities of understanding the world through visual means. At the same time, visual culture is also a form of comparative interpretation and a methodology of research.
In this course, we will learn about the history of visual culture and explore visual culture methodologies by asking questions about the production, reproduction and circulation of images. Following W. J. T. Mitchell understanding of image’s iconology, we will focus our attention on the lives and passions of images, and we will seek to understand the power they exercise. We will develop “ways of seeing” as John Berger formulated it and will learn following the pioneering work of feminist scholar Laura Mulvey how the masculine gaze in film was embodied by spectators both male and female. Furthermore, following the work of Michael Foucault we will learn about gaze regimes: what can be seen (and what cannot be seen) and from which perspectives we do it. Finally, we will discuss “the right to see”: visuality and counter visuality in Nicholas Mirzoeff words, in the context of seeing as an act of citizenship.

Course/Module aims:
This course will provide students with a broad historical and contemporary understanding of theories in the field of visual culture and will allow students to experiment with methodological practices of visual culture research.

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
Successfully explain the main theories in the field of visual culture research and place them in their historical and cultural contexts and engage with them.
Compare different visual theories in order to assess similarities and differences between them.
Critically analyze visual culture artifacts and performances in light of the theories learned in the course.

Attendance requirements(%):
100

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: Lectures and class discussions based on students writing prompts

Course/Module Content:
Session 1: Introduction to the course and the syllabus
Session 2: What is visual culture and how is visual knowledge created?
Session 3: Images as icons
Session 4: Ways of Seeing and ways of looking (class screening of the BBC series episode)
Session 5: The gaze that embodies power: between surveillance, care and control.
Session 6: Seeing bodies: on gender and visual culture
Session 7: Memory and history: the museum as a visual field
Session 8: Maps, mapping and urban planning.
Session 9: The view from above- from the gaze of God to the gaze of the state.
Session 10: Watching wars and framing atrocities.
Session 11: The right lo look, the duty to see and the responsibility to bear witness.
Session 12: Visual politics.
Session 13: On images and imaginations.
Session 14: Students presentations and closing remarks.

*There may be changes to the syllabus and subsequently to the bibliography.

Required Reading:
Berger, John. About Looking. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011.
———. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Adult, 2008.
Bleiker, Roland, ed. Visual Global Politics. 1 edition. London ; New York: Routledge, 2018.
Chaudhuri, Shohini. Feminist Film Theorists: Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis, Barbara Creed. Routledge Critical Thinkers. London ; New York: Routledge, 2006.
Crary, Jonathan. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2001.
Demo, Anne Teresa, and Bradford Vivian, eds. Rhetoric, Remembrance, and Visual Form: Sighting Memory. 1 edition. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Green, Jeffrey Edward. The Eyes of the People: Democracy in an Age of Spectatorship. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Hariman, Robert, and John Louis Lucaites. The Public Image: Photography and Civic Spectatorship. Chicago ; London: University Of Chicago Press, 2016.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Duke University Press, 2011.
———, ed. The Visual Culture Reader. 3 edition. London ; New York: Routledge, 2012.
Mitchell, W. J. T. Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and Media Aesthetics. University of Chicago Press, 2015.
———. “There Are No Visual Media.” Journal of Visual Culture 4, no. 2 (August 1, 2005): 257–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412905054673.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. Macmillan, 1989.
Piper, Karen. Cartographic Fictions: Maps, Race, and Identity. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2002.
Rancière, Jacques. The Emancipated Spectator. Verso, 2009.
———. The Politics of Aesthetics. A&C Black, 2013.
Rogoff, Irit. Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture. 1 edition. London ; New York: Routledge, 2000.
Rose, Rachel, Laura Mulvey, and Rachel Rose. Laura Mulvey “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” 1975. Two Works. Afterall Books, 2016.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, 1998.
אזולאי, אריאלה. “צילום | מפתח – כתב עת לקסיקלי למחשבה פוליטית.” Accessed September 11, 2019. http://mafteakh.tau.ac.il/2010/08/07-2/.
אריאלי-הורוביץ, דנה, אורי ברטל, and נעמי מאירי-דן. פרוטוקולאז’ 2013 כותבים חזותי: מתודולוגיות בחקר התרבות החזותית. תל-אביב]: רסלינג, 2013.
ברונפלד-שטיין, חוה. “רואָה-יורָה | מפתח – כתב עת לקסיקלי למחשבה פוליטית.” Accessed September 11, 2019. http://mafteakh.tau.ac.il/term/%d7%a8%d7%95%d7%90%d6%b8%d7%94-%d7%99%d7%95%d7%a8%d6%b8%d7%94/.
גינזבורג, רותי. “צילום אזרחים | מפתח – כתב עת לקסיקלי למחשבה פוליטית.” Accessed September 11, 2019. http://mafteakh.tau.ac.il/term/%d7%a6%d7%99%d7%9c%d7%95%d7%9d-%d7%90%d7%96%d7%a8%d7%97%d7%99%d7%9d/.
דביר, יותם. “המוזאון העתיד לבוא”: אסופת מאמרים. ירושלים: Bookieman, 2012.
פוקו, מישל. לפקח ולהעניש: הולדת בית הסוהר. הסדרה לפילוסופיה. תל-אביב: רסלינג, 2015.

Additional Reading Material:
Azoulay, Ariella. Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography. Translated by Louise Bethlehem. London: Verso Books, 2012.

Azoulay, Ariella. “What Are Human Rights?” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, no. 1 (2015): 8.
Hariman, Robert, and John Louis Lucaites. No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Kozol, Wendy. Life’s America: Family and Nation in Postwar Photojournalism. Temple University Press, 1994.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. How to See the World. Penguin UK, 2015.
Mitchell, W. J. T. Landscape and Power, Second Edition. University of Chicago Press, 2002.
———. What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2006.
Rancière, Jacques. The Future of the Image. Verso, 2007.
Silverman, Kaja. The Threshold of the Visible World. Psychology Press, 1996.
Stoler, Ann Laura. Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination. Duke University Press, 2013.
Zelizer, Barbie. About to Die: How News Images Move the Public. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

אזולאי, אריאלה. האמנה האזרחית של הצילום. פטיש. תל-אביב: רסלינג, 2006.
גינזבורג, רות. והייתם לנו לעיניים: ארגוני זכויות אדם ישראליים בשטחים הכבושים מבעד לעין המצלמה. הסדרה לאמניות. תל אביב: רסלינג, 2014.
רג‘ואן שטאנג, סיון, and נועה חזן. תרבות חזותית בישראל. הקיבוץ המאוחד, שנקר הנדסה עיצוב אמנות, 2017. https://kotar.cet.ac.il//KotarApp/Viewer.aspx?nBookID&eq;104497111

Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 70 %
Presentation 10 %
Participation in Tutorials 0 %
Project work 0 %
Assignments 20 %
Reports 0 %
Research project 0 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 0 %

Additional information:
Between the sixth and eighth week I will hold personal brief meetings with students to think together about the course’s final project.