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E58. 2420: Visual Culture Methods
Thursday 2:00 - 4:10 pm
Call number: 43292
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Course co-ordinator: Nicholas Mirzoeff
Email: nm45 [at]nyu.edu
Office hours: Weds 12-2pm [email for appointment]
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Visual culture is the comparative study of visualities. These visualities of course include visual
images and visual media but also extend to visualizations of the social, the work of the imagination
and their impact on questions of globalization. This seminar is a workshop-format, criticismintensive, hands-on exploration of visual culture methods across media, time periods and critical
methods, including new digital tools. In order to give coherence to the sequence of classes, it will
center on a cross-cultural thematic exploration of the visualization of “race” in the Americas.
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The class centers on the interface between the remaking of race as part of the global crisis
and visual culture as both the product of globalization and a means of analyzing it. In the
past five years, digital tools have transformed the possibilities open to visual culture scholars,
making it possible to move in the direction of “show” and “tell,” or more exactly, to open a
new dialogue between “writers” and “readers.
This fluid moment offers exciting new possibilities for learning. This class therefore
prioritizes process over product and sees participation and collaboration as critical tools in
themselves. Please note: this is not a good class, therefore, for those who prefer to be
passive, silent and/or fully directed by the instructor.
Class projects
The seminar will be divided into four groups who will each lead discussion in three meetings,
with the emphasis on the “how” we might study a given problem, rather than aspiring to
solve it in the time available. Class members should post questions and thoughts on the blog
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Tools: the class blog is at: http://blogs.nyu.edu/blogs/nm45/vcmethods/
The wiki is at https://wikis.nyu.edu/display/visualculture/Home
You will need to use your NYU ID and/or email to access these tools.
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before and after meetings. Group members will share with each other material forms
(written, visual, digital) of their response prior to the seminar and two of these will then be
shared with the instructor for further feedback. The group will also produce a final
presentation assembling your sense of what has been learned that can be broken down into
individual segments or preferably produced together.
>Meetings:
The Politics of the Archive
1. Week One: Sep. 9 Introductions
2. Week Two: Sep. 16
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Visual Culture as Visual Culture
Visual thinking: archives, knowledge-creation, information, tools.
Reading: Lev Manovich, “The Practice of Everyday Media Life” (2008), at
www.manovich.net
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Please try and attend the presentation by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “Planned
Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy."
@5pm 5th floor, 20 Cooper Square.
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3. Week Three: Sep. 23
The Political and the Sensible
Jacques Rancière, “Ten Theses on the Political.” Robert Pfaller “Little Gestures of
Disappearance: Interpassivity and the Theory of Ritual”
At http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/interpassbk01.htm
Re:making race in the Americas
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4. Week Four: Sep. 30
The Politics of Whiteness
Viewing: Crash (2005)
Readings: “The Obama Issue,” Journal of Visual Culture (Sage, 2009)
5. Week Five: October 7
Classification:
WEB Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk Elizabeth Abel “Bathroom Doors and
Drinking Fountains: Jim Crow's Racial Symbolic,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 25, No. 3
(Spring, 1999). Brian Wallis “Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz’s Racial
Daguerreotypes,” American Art, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer, 1995).
Research the visual archive of slavery at
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/082_slave.html
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6. Week Six: October 14
Genealogies of Katrina
Joseph Roach: Cities of the Dead. Especially: 1: History, Memory and Performance 132; 5: One Blood and 6: Carnival and the Law: 179-282.
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On Katrina: see Hurricanearchive.org and levees.org, Spike Lee, When the Levees
Broke, Act One (2006); see YouTube clips for Treme (2010)
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7. Week Seven October 21
Radicalizing “race”
Port Huron Project: http://www.marktribe.net/art-work/port-huron-project-1/
Angela Davis recreation, Stokely Carmichael recreation: please follow the link to the
Internet archive full-length versions.
See “Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks,” dir. Isaac Julien (1995).
Readings: Angela Y. Davis, “Slavery, Civil Rights, and Abolitionist Perspectives
towards Prison,” chapter two, Are Prisons Obsolete? Frantz Fanon, “On Violence,”
from The Wretched of the Earth
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The New (Racialized) Everyday
8. Week Eight: October 28:
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Postcolonial
Fred Moten, “The Case of Blackness,” Criticism vol. 50 no. 2 (2008)
Okwui Enwezor, “The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a State of
Permanent Transition,” Research in African Literatures, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Winter, 2003)
Case study: Yinka Shonibare
Yinka Shonibare “The Fourth Plinth,” see http://www.yinkashonibarembe.com/
“Dorian Gray,” and “The Scramble for Africa,” see
http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/shonibare/intro.html
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9. Week Nine: November 4
Separation now and then
Ariella Azoulay, “The Inhuman Condition: A Visual Essay,” and Hilla Dayan
“Regimes of Separation: Israel/Palestine and the Shadows of Apartheid,” from Adi
Ophir (ed.), The Power of Inclusive Exclusion (Zone, 2009).
Compare and Contrast: Teddy Cruz, “Radicalizing the Local”; Explore the
Redlining in the US archive: http://salt.unc.edu/T-RACES/
10. Week Ten: November 11
The Racialized Elections 2010
Assemble an archive of the current election campaign with regards to how “race”
was constructed, (mis)represented, elided, displaced.
11. Week Eleven: Nov. 18
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Race as technology:
Beth Coleman “Race as Technology” and Jennifer Gonzalez, “The Face and the
Public: Race, Secrecy and Digital Art Practice,” in Camera Obscura 70, vol. 24 no 1
(2009); Lisa Nakamura, “Digital Racial Formations and Networked Images of the
Body,” from Digitizing Race (2008).
Wendy Chun, “Programmed Visions,”
http://vectorsjournal.org/projects/index.php?project=85
12. Week 12: Nov 24: Thanksgiving
Where Next
13. Week 13: Dec 1
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Presentation of projects: Groups A and B
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Take a test at: Alllooksame.com; Explore the work of the Mongrel collective:
mongrel.org.uk
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14. Week 14: December 8:
Presentation of projects: Groups C and D
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15. December 15: reading week
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