This seminar will ask how photography produces ways of knowing: how does
photography's ... Camera Indica: the social life of Indian photographs. Chicago: ...
The Epistemology of Photography
Syllabus | Spring 2011 This seminar will ask how photography produces ways of knowing: how does photography’s reality-effect shape its dissemination and absorption? Is photography’s emergence during the colonial era coincidental or catalytic? How is memory (re) constituted in a photography-saturated world? What kinds of histories does photography encourage and discourage? Is a photograph an object? We will read across disciplines (literature, anthropology, history, history of art, political science, theory) to investigate the epistemology of photography and the photograph. Rebecca M. Brown |
[email protected] Gilman 163 | OH: 1-3 Tuesdays | http://rebeccambrown.com/607 Writing: Path 1 Six four-page abstracts over the course of the semester, due the Friday after seminar that week. These should represent short synthesis arguments, in which you draw together an analysis of a photograph or photographic project with the readings and discussion from class for that week. Revisions encouraged; full, revised portfolio of abstracts due May 19. Writing: Path 2 Thesis-driven, academic (on the way to publishable) article of 24 pages, with a focused argument and synthesizing some of the material we have pursued in seminar. Rough draft due April 15; final paper due May 19. Guidelines No incompletes will be given in this course; writing should be taking place in concert with the reading and preparation for seminar, during the semester. In the Bookstore Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida. New York: Hill and Wang. Edwards, Elizabeth. 2001. Raw histories: photographs, anthropology and museums. Oxford: Berg. Lydon, Jane. 2005. Eye contact: photographing indigenous Australians. Durham: Duke University Press. Pinney, Christopher. 1997. Camera Indica: the social life of Indian photographs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Powers, Richard. 1985. Three farmers on their way to a dance. New York: Beech Tree. Sontag, Susan. 1978. On photography. London: Allen Lane. Strassler, Karen. 2010. Refracted visions: popular photography and national modernity in Java. Durham: Duke University Press.
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Seminar Plan Wk of 2/7 Foundational Texts
Sontag, Barthes
Wk of 2/14
Proto-Photo
Benjamin, Mitter, Jain, Pinney (2004)
Wk of 2/21
Imaging People I
Ryan, Pinney (1997, ch 1-2)
Wk of 2/28
Imaging People II
Lydon
Wk of 3/7
Imaging People III
Curtis exhib, Gidley, Glass, Egan, Zamir
Wk of 3/14
Imaging People IV
Alloula, Mathur, Steet
Wk of 3/28
Archive & Memory
Powers
Wk of 4/4
As Object
Edwards
Wk of 4/11
Modernity
Strassler
Wk of 4/18
Postcolonial
Pinney (1997 ch 3), Morris
Wk of 4/25
Seminar choice
Wk of 5/2
Seminar choice
Based on the direction of discussion in earlier weeks and the interests of those in the seminar, we will decide together which readings to pursue in our last few meetings.
Readings (via course website) Alloula, Malek. “From the Colonial Harem.” In The Visual Culture Reader. Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed. New York: Routledge, 1998, pp. 519-24. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In his Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, pp. 217-51. Egan, Shannon. 2006. “‘Yet in a Primitive Condition’ Edward S. Curtis’s North American Indian.” American Art 20:3 (Fall): 58-83. Gidley, Mick. 1994. “Pictorialist Elements in Edward S. Curtis’s Photographic Representation of American Indians.” The Yearbook of English Studies 24, pp. 180-92. Glass, Aaron. 2009. “A Cannibal in the Archive: Performance, Materialisty, and (In)Visibility in Unpublished Edward Curtis Photographs of the Kwakwaka’wakw Hamat’sa.” Visual Anthropology Review 25:2, pp. 128-49. Jain, Kajri. 2003. “More than Meets the Eye: The Circulation of Images and the Embodiment of Value. In Beyond appearances? Visual practices and ideologies in modern India, edited by Sumathi Ramaswamy, 33-70. New Delhi: Sage. Mathur, Saloni. 2007. India by design: colonial history and cultural display. Berkeley: University of California Press, “Collecting Colonial Postcards,” 109-132. Mitter, Partha. 2003. “Mechanical Production and the World of the Colonial Artist.” In Beyond appearances? Visual practices and ideologies in modern India, edited by Sumathi Ramaswamy, 1-32. New Delhi: Sage. Morris, Rosalind C. 2009. “Photography and the Power of Images in the History of Power: Notes from Thailand.” In Photographies East: the camera and its histories in East and Southeast Asia, edited by R.C. Morris, 121-60. Durham: Duke University Press. Pinney, Christopher. 2004. Photos of the gods: the printed image and political struggle in India. London: Reaktion, excerpts. Ryan, James R. 1997. Picturing empire: photography and the visualization of the British Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, excerpts. Steet, Linda. 2000. Veils and daggers: a century of National geographic's representation of the Arab world. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, excerpts. Zamir, Shamoon. 2007. “Native Agency and the Making of ‘The North American Indian’: Alexander B. Upshaw and Edward S. Curtis.” American Indian Quarterly 31:4 (Fall): 613-53.
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