Thinking Through Images

What is an image? How do images impact the way we see the world? How have photography, film and video impacted the way we think about seeing? Our course will combine key essays on visuality with specific photographs, films and videos, and will draw from French film theory, Soviet theorists of montage, American film historians and cultural critics. With examples ranging from Jean-Luc Godard to Naim June Pak, the readings and lectures are designed both as an introduction to the field and as an opportunity to learn how formally to analyze visual media. This reading and writing intensive class is divided into three primary units: the first on the spectacle of attraction in early and avant-garde cinema; the second on theories of the image (in Benjamin, Bazin, Eisenstein, and Barthes); and the third on visual pleasure from art house cinema to the slasher film.

Satisfies General Education Requirements:

• Group-Satisfying: Arts and Letters
• Multicultural Courses: International Cultures (IC)