CLIT2025: Visual Cultures

6 credits| Prof. Jean MA

This course introduces students to theories of vision and visual representation, with readings drawn from philosophy, art history, film and media studies, and the history of technology. It focuses on the impact of technologies –such as the camera obscura, photography, film, digital media, among others –on ways of seeing and understandings of visuality. Our explorations will be structured around the tension between two general positions: firstly, a positive view of the capacity of vision and the powers of visual technology to reveal truth and to expand the scope of knowledge, memory, and experience; and secondly, a discourse of disenchantment that associates visuality and its techniques with deception, surveillance, and submission to power.

Notes: NEW MAJORS (declared Major from August 2023 onwards) must take ONE FOUNDATIONAL COURSE (6 credits)  (CLIT2001, CLIT2025, CLIT2094 and CLIT2095) preferably in the second year

Assessment: 100% coursework.