In recent years theories of visuality and materiality have become central to debates in the humanities. Poststructuralism has prompted reconsiderations of representation and reality, changing the parameters of objects of study. This has resulted in new relationships of words to images and objects, as well as innovative conceptual tools available to interpret all three. In this interdisciplinary seminar we will examine the phenomena of cultural production and consumption of a range of media in different times and places, asking how images and objects function, and how they mediate what we see and experience. Through shared readings, student presentations, and written projects, we will consider issues of form, representation, and knowledge, and the politics of ascribing meaning and value.

Readings

Assigned readings will be placed on eres or will be from the following texts available for purchase at the campus bookstore (** required, *recommended):

• ** Karp, Ivan and Steven D. Lavine, eds. Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian, 1991.
• ** Appadurai, Arjun, ed. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press; 1988.
• * Brown, Bill, ed. Things. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2004.

Students are expected to read all essays critically and come to class ready to talk through questions, insights, doubts, and reactions.

Weekly Presentations

Each student will make at least one oral presentation in class, directing discussion of assigned readings. Written notes for the presentation should be handed in after the presentation.

Semester Project

We require all students to complete a semester project on any topic that corresponds with the theme of the course. The character of the projects will be discussed in class. By Week 9 all students are to turn in to the entire class a two-page project proposal, including a working bibliography and copy of the object under consideration. Having read all the proposals, students are to come to class Week 10 with a list of questions, comments, or concerns for each of the projects. Only one comment is necessary for each project, but it should be a methodological question fundamental to its execution. The student whose paper is under consideration need not respond to the queries. Instead, we hope that these comments will foster a substantial debate that will help each student develop his or her work. Students will present their proposals in class. Final papers (approximately 15 pages in length) are due May 10.

Grading

Class Participation-20%
Weekly Presenation-20%
Proposals/Workshop-20%
Final Paper-40%

Schedule

Week 1 Introduction: Images, Artifacts and Disciplines

Week 2 Style and the Visual

Heinreich Wölffin, Principles of Art History, trans. M. Hottinger, New York, 1950, pp. 1-40.

Meyer Schapiro, “Style,” Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society, New York, 1995, pp. 51-102.

Svetlana Alpers, “Style is What You Make It,” in The Concept of Style, ed. Berel Lang, Ithaca, 1987, pp. 137-162.

Week 3 Value and Commoditization

Karl Marx, Capital Vol. I Part One: Commodities and Money, in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker, (New York: Norton, 1978 [1887]) pp. 302-329.

Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in The Social Life of Things, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988) pp. 64-91.

Pierre Bourdieu, “Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power,” trans. Richard Nice, Outline of a Theory of Practice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977) pp. 159-197.

Week 4 Iconography and Iconology

Erwin Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art,” in Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York, 1955, pp. 26-54.

Erwin Panofsky, “Et in Arcadia Ego: Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition,” in Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York, 1955, pp. 295-320.

Michael Ann Holly, “Unwriting Iconology,” in Iconography at the Crossroads, ed. Brendan Cassidy, Princeton, 1993, pp. 17-26.

Keith Moxey, “The Politics of Iconology,” in Iconography at the Crossroads, ed. Brendan Cassidy, Princeton, 1993, pp. 27-32.

Irving Lavin, “Iconography as a Humanistic Discipline,” in Iconography at the Crossroads, ed. Brendan Cassidy, Princeton, 1993, pp. 33-42.

Week 5 Word, Picture, Object

James Elkins, “Art History and Images That Are Not Art” and “Interpreting Nonart Images” in The Domain of Images (Ithaca, Cornell Univ. Press, 1999) pp. 3-12, 31-51.

Robert E. Hegel, “Habits of Viewing Pictures,” “Picturing Texts and Textualizing Pictures,” and “Picturing Through Texts - and Pictures” in Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998) pp. 311-326.

Henry Dewitt Smith II, “The History of the Book in Edo and Paris,” in Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era, ed. James McClain (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1994) pp. 332-352.

Roland Barthes, The Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., 1982 [1970] pp. 2-14, 33-37, 88-94.

Week 6 Semiology and Visual Interpretation

Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin, New York, 1966, pp. 6-17 (Introduction: II and III) and 65-78 (Part One: I and II).

Alex Potts, “Sign,” in Critical Terms for Art History, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff, Chicago, 1996, pp. 17-30.

Roland Barthes, “The Photographic Message,” in Image Music Text, ed. and trans. Stephen Heath, New York, 1977, pp. 15-31.

Norman Bryson, “Semiology and Visual Representation,” in Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation, ed. Norman Bryson et al., Cambridge, 1991, pp. 61-73.

Stephen Melville, “Reflections on Bryson,” in Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation, ed. Norman Bryson et al., Cambridge, 1991, pp. 74-78.

Norman Bryson and Mieke Bal, “Semiotics and Art History,” Art Bulletin 73 (1991): 174-208.

Week 7 The Nature of Evidence

Thomas J. Schlereth, “Material Culture and Cultural Research,” in Material Culture: A Research Guide (Univ. Press at Kansas, 1985) pp. 1-34.

Bill Brown, “Thing Theory,” in Things, ed. Bill Brown (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2004) pp. 1-22.

Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” in Things pp. 151-173.

Donald Preziosi, “The Question of Art History,” Joel Snyder, “A Response to Donald Preziosi,” and Preziosi, “A Rejoinder to Joel Snyder,” in Questions of Evidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion Across the Disciplines, eds. James Chandler, Arnold I. Davidson, and Harry Harootunian (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1994).

Week 8 SPRING BREAK

Week 9 Truth and Knowledge

Michel Foucault, “Las Meninas,” in The Order of Things, New York, 1979, pp. 3-16.

Michel Foucault, This is Not a Pipe, ed. and trans. James Harkness, Berkeley, 1983.

Jacques Derrida, “Passe-Partout,” and “+R (Into the Bargain),” in The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod, Chicago, 1987, pp. 1-13, 151-181.

Assignment: All students are to turn in to the entire class a two-page project proposal, including a working bibliography and copy of the object under consideration.

Week 10 Workshop on Papers In-Progress

Assignment: Having read all the proposals handed in last week, students are to come to class with a list of questions, comments, or concerns for each of the projects. Only one comment is necessary for each project, but it should be a methodological question fundamental to its execution. The student whose paper is under consideration need not respond to the queries. Instead, we hope that these comments will foster a substantial debate that will help each student develop his or her work.

Week 11 Art Objects and Objects of Ethnography

Svetlana Alpers,“The Museum as a Way of Seeing,” in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991) pp. 25-32.

Michael Baxandall. “Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects,” in Exhibiting Cultures pp. 33-41.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Objects of Ethnography,” in Exhibiting Cultures pp. 386-443.

Tony Bennet, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” in The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politcs (New York, Routledge 1995) pp. 59-88.

Week 12 Practicing New Historicism

Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism, Chicago, 2000, pp. 1-19, 75-109.

Lynn Hunt, “Introduction: History, Culture, and Text,” in The New Cultural History, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 1-22.

Randolph Starn, “Seeing Culture in a Room for an Renaissance Prince,” in The New Cultural History, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 205-232.

Week 13 Artistry, Ethnicity, Authenticity

Carol Duncan. “Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship,” in Exhibiting Cultures pp. 88-103.

James Clifford, “On Collecting Art and Culture,” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth -Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Harvard Univ. Press 1988) pp. 215-251.

Rey Chow, “Fateful Attachments: On Collecting, Fidelity, and Lao She,” in Things pp. 362-380.

C. Bayly, “The Origins of Swadeshi (Home Industry): Cloth and Indian Society 1700-1930,” in The Social Life of Things pp. 285-321.

Week 14 Student Presentations

Week 15 Student Presentations