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Course-unit Programme
(Regular Full-time Course Syllabus)
Course-unit details:
Name of course-unit (subject): Theory of representation
Language of instruction (from sample unit): English
Name of course-unit in Hungarian (from sample unit): Reprezentáció-elmélet
ETR (USRS) course-unit code (subject unit):
Validity of course-unit (from subject):
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date of launch of course-unit: autumn/spring term of academic year 2009/2010
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Date of termination of course-unit:
Credit value of course unit (from course-unit element) :
Institute offering the course-unit  (from subject):
Instructor responsible for course-unit  (from subject):
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name:
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Ministry of Education Registry number*:
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SIN code*:
Course-unit group (subject DTL):
Course-unit type (subject unit):
X lecture
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These data are generated by ETR (USRS).
These data are generated by ETR (USRS).
These data are generated by ETR (USRS).
These data are generated by ETR (USRS).
These data are generated by ETR (USRS).
……… credits
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practical class
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lecture and practical class to be completed together
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training
Course-unit term requirements (subject unit):
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examination
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practical grade based on a scale from 1 to 5
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mid-term classroom test at practical class + exam (pre-condition of applying for the exam is at least
a 50% performance at the practical class)
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practical grade based on a three-grade scale
Number of contact hours attached to the course-unit (subject unit):
Number of theoretical classes (lectures):
……… classes/week
Number of practical classes (seminars): ……… classes/week
Number of training classes:
……… classes/term
Content features of course-unit:
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Teaching objectives of course-unit (description of 2-3 lines) (sample unit): The aim of the course is to
introduce the notion of the representation, the main phases of its history, the different
contexts of its application. The theoretical approach of the first part of the course will focus on
a philosophical, linguistic and semiotic interpretation of the representation, but in the second
half
of the semester we will also deal with visual and cultural implications of this concept.
During the semester we will overview the most important systems of signs of the everyday life
and mass communication. The program offers students to be acquainted with linguistic
approach, especially pragmatics, and to be familiar with the analysis of contemporary visual
culture and its social uses. The theoretical bases acquired by the study of representation
theories will help students to be more at ease with other theoretical texts.
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The topics and detailed syllabus of the factual content of the course-unit in a weekly breakdown
(sample unit):
1. week: topics: An overview of the course. Requirements for validity. The notion of the representation
and its history. The uses of the notion in different disciplinary contexts. Verbal and visual
representation.
2. week: topics: The notion of representation in the contextual frame of the Antiquity. Plato and the
theory of idea. The definition of art as double imitation. Plato: The Republic, Book VII.
(http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.8.vii.html). A theory of language and sign: Cratylus by Plato.
The relation of things and names: arbitrary or natural? Aristotle: Poetics. Art as imitation. The two
types of imitation: mimesis and diegesis. An aesthetics of the representation.
3. week: topics: Language and reality in medieval and modern philosophy. Medieval philosophy of
language: the debate of realism and nominalism. The appearance of a reflexion on the nature of
human cognition in the history of philosophy: Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, etc. The philosophy of
language of Humboldt. Phenomenology and hermeneutics.
4. week: topics: Semiotics and semiology. The birth of a science of signs in the beginning of 20th
century. Its relation to other sciences. The notion of the sign and its structure. The most important
models of the theory of signs. Major concepts of the semiotics. Semiotics of Pierce, Morris and
Saussure.
5. week: topics : Semiotics and cultural studies. F. de Saussure and the birth of the modern general
linguistics. The extension of semiotic model to different fields of the culture. A semiotic approach of
the contemporary mass culture (film, fashion, myths, advertisement, politics, etc.). Roland Barthes'
semiology.
6. week: topics: Philosophy of language and modern theories of language. Wittgenstein and the
logical reductionism. The transformational generative grammar: syntax and inner representations.
Communication and representation. Toward a pragmatic approach of language and linguistic
representations: the speech act theory. The language-game theory of the later Wittgenstein.
7. week: topics: Theories of visual representations in the history of aesthetics, images and signs,
representations in art history, words and images (Foucault), technology and image making
(Benjamin), media art, new media art. Representation theories according to structuralism and
poszt-structuralism, static and dynamic sign theories
8. week: topics Visual culture/1. Visual cultural theories and its critics (Michell), art and/or mass
culture, high and/or low culture, pragmatism is aesthetics (Shusterman), methods to analyze visual
items (see. iconology, narratology, semiotics, psychoanalysis, cultural readings)
9. week: topics Visual culture/2. Politics of representation. Representation and symbolic power,
Bourdieu’s theories of media and television, MC Luhan’s theory of Guttenberg Galaxies and global
villages. Media and social problems (poverty, gender problems, etc. ). A case study from Hungarian
television.
10. week: topics: Subculture, fashion, identity. Cultural studies. Hebdige’s theory of punk subculture,
cultural antinomies, modern and contemporary art and/as subcultures.
11. week: topics. Cognitive theories of representation. Thinking as representation. Theories of “positive
psychology” (flow, mind and representation), ethics and representation (dilemmas and theories,
see. Heidegger, Marin, Didi-Huberman).
12. week. Summary, discussing examination requirements.
List of practical tasks required to fulfil the term requirements of the practical class:
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Classroom test
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Presentation
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Essay to be submitted
Detailed description of the methods applied to evaluate and grade student performance at a lecture:
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Option to take a preliminary exam the last week of term-time
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Written exam
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Oral exam
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Complex exam (written and oral)
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Details:
Other
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Details:
Reading material necessary to complete the course-unit:
Blonsky, Marshall: On Signs – a Semiotics Reader, John Hopkins University Press, 1985
Fiske, John (1982): Introduction to Communication Studies. London: Routledge
Foucault, Michel: The order of things: an archeology of human sciences, Routledge, London, 2002
Gombrich, Ernst H (1977): Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation.
London: Phaidon
Hebdige, Dick: Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen., 1979
Mirzoeff, Nicolas: The visual culture reader, London, Routledge, 2002 (mainly: Roland Barthes: The rhetoric
of image)
Thwaites, Tony, Lloyd Davies & Warwick Mules (2002): Introducing Cultural and Media Studies: A
Semiotic Approach London: Palgrave