Visual Representations in Area Studies

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Visual Representations in Area Studies

• Introducing Visual Culture in an Undergraduate
  Syllabus

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How we got therePedagogical considerations

• Addressing a more diverse student body
• ? desire to engage students more directly
• ? awareness of different learning styles
• Documents authentiques in the language class -
  audio, video and satellite-TV
• The advent of the web ready access to portable
  visuals

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Complementary materials for the teaching of
literature

• Materials developed in-house and made available
  on the University intranet
• Supplemented by existing high-quality websites
• E.g. http//www.wiu.edu/Apollinaire/index.htm
• Aiming to encourage and support students own
  research and project development

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Visual production as object of study The need
for theory and tools for analysis

• To develop critical awareness of the language of
  visual texts
• To introduce students to critical artistic/
  academic discourses on a range of images
• To encourage students to refine and express their
  own visual judgments through use of appropriate
  critical language

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Tools for pictorial analysis

• Richard Howells. Visual Culture (2003)
• Introduction to a range of approaches, e.g.
  iconology, art history, ideology, semiotics,
  hermeneutics
• Griselda Pollock. Modernity and the Spaces of
  Femininity. In Nicholas Mirzoeff, A Visual
  Culture Reader (1998)
• Example of feminist critique applied to
  representations of women in Impressionist
  paintings by male artists
• Michael OToole. The Language of Displayed Art
  (1994)
• Semiotics as a language through which our
  perceptions of a work of art can be shared
• http//www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/ahist/arthist111/
  University of Aucklands website Ways of
  Seeing/Analysing a work of art

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Other Visual and Critical Resources

• Own selected visual documents, incl. CDs/DVDs
• Museum websites
• Art exhibitions with questionnaires
• University Library - introduction to online
  visual and critical databases

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Example 1

• Second-year module Modernity the City
  Revolution, Spectacle, Representation in Art and
  Literature Paris Capital of the Arts 18481918
• Political/social/cultural context
• Accent on literary and pictorial avant-gardes
• Study of specific literary texts and paintings
  produced in that period

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Example 1 (seq.)

• E.g. Gustave Caillebottes Rue de Paris, Temps
  de Pluie (1877)
• Studied through
• a semiotic grid of analysis
• a formal, art historical approach contrasted with
  ideological approaches (feminist, Marxist)

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Example 2

• Final-year Area Studies module French Identity
  and Difference since 1945
• Focuses on La période des Indépendances and
  subsequent political and social developments in
  France
• Considers issues of conflict, trauma, silence and
  memory, tradition and modernity
• Highlights representations of identity in the
  aftermath of decolonisation

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Example 2 (seq.)

• Introduction to selected works by contemporary
  visual artists of North African descent, esp.
  Zineb Sedira
• Visual representations as a key area of
  interrogation and intervention in defining new
  understandings of identity
• Postcolonial analytical/critical framework

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Assessment

• Students Research Projects, incl. research
  diaries, annotated bibliographies and formulation
  of a research question
• Formal Examination
• Both requiring that students demonstrate their
  ability to analyse visual and/or literary texts
  and exercise critical judgment