This course is a critical examination of newly emerged interdisciplinary and cultural study named as Visual Culture. We will explore the critical theories on the construction of vision, visual representation and issues and problematic developed around the “visuality”. In the context of bigger matrix of daily life experience, the course will prepare the students to raise questions about the cultural and social dynamics.
The course will pursue a critical approach borrowed from the critical theory. Designed for the questions of look, gaze, glance, the practices of observation, surveillance and experiences of visual pleasure, voyeurism, and tourism, students will take the visual experience and visual literacy as an analytical field. During the term, visual products will be the cases for the discussion on their ideological, technological, phenomenological aspects and contesting visual forms of diverse cultural and historical periods will be explored in terms of time and space.
Vertical Tabs
Course Learning Outcomes
Learning Outcomes | Program Learning Outcomes | Teaching Methods | Assessment Methods |
1) Recognize the contamporary cultural theories indicating the conceptual frameworks of visual culture | (1,2, 3, 4, 5) | 1 | A,C |
2) Evaluate the visual reception of daily life through the effects of the mass media | (1,2, 3, 5, 6, 11) | 1,2,3,4 | A,B,C |
3) Relates the concepts of reality, its representation and cultural differencies in the course of history | (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9) | 1,2,3,4 | A,B,C |
4) Analyse the basic scholarly writings on the concept of “gaze” invested with psycholojical, cultural and social components. Discuss and present critical issues of visuality through exposing examples. | (2, 3, 4, 6, 14) | 1,2,3,4 | A,B,C |
5 Relate and interprete the role of visual products of daily life with their own experience and behavioural outcomes | (4, 5, 7, 9, 11) | 1,2,3,4 | A,B,C |
6) Develope the ability to critisize the mechanisms of cultural production and intitutions such as architacture, advertising, musuem, writing of art history, cinema | (1,2, 5, 6, 7, 14) | 1,2,3,4 | A,B,C |
Course Flow
COURSE CONTENT | ||
Week | Topics | Study Materials |
1 | Introduction: close look at the concept of “look”. Relations between surrounding visual objects and culture, and our encounter with them | John Berger, Way of Seeing Görme Biçimleri 1st chapter |
2 | Object and the subject of the look: who is allowed to look, to what purposes, who is sanctioned to be looked. Sources for constructing the images. |
John Berger, Way of Seeing Görme Biçimleri 2,3,4 th chapter
Mirzoeff Nicholas, (2003) An Introduction to Visual Culture, “Picture definition: Line, Color, Vision pp. 37-65 |
3 |
How and in which way has our understanding of picture, visual image changed through the history?
|
Bordieu, Pierre, “Social definition of history”
Mirzoeff, “The age of Photography (1839-1982) pp. 65-88 Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", in CR |
4 |
Culture of empire; the gaze of the dominant. Who is visible and who is invisible and who is allowed to talk about or represent what s/he has seen. Challeng to the framer of the object of the desiring subject.
|
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Detroit: Black & Red, 1983. Start reading from the 1st & the 2nd chapters.
Shohat & Stam, “ Narrativizing visual Culture: Toward a Policentric Aesthetics” in VCR |
5 | Short coverage of history of the challenges and breakthroughs; shifting the focus… From renaissance up to now debate on the framing of the world |
Barth, R., “ Rethoric of the İmage “ in VCR
Foucault, Panopticon in VCR Jay, M., “Scopic Regimes of Modernity” in VCR |
6 |
Spectatorship and off framing: Spectatorship as an investigative field; what the “eye” sees and the entire set of beliefs and desires; set of coded languges and generic apparatuses. Who is allowed to speak about them |
Hansen, M., (1990) "Early Cinema: Whose Public Sphere?", in CR
Mulvey, L., “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in FT |
7 | Mid-term.... Your presentations and written essay... | |
8 |
Media, post-modernism and the Visual Culture... Culture, visual narration and entertainment industry... Blurring the boundries
|
Stam, R., “Television News and It’s Spectator” in FT
Morse, M., “An Ontology of Everyday Distraction: the Freeway, the Mall and the Television”, in CR |
9 |
City space, mapping the daily life and experience of visuality in space
|
P. Virilio, “The Overexposed City” in CR
Foucault, M., “Of Other Spaces” in VCR
|
10 | Modernity, gender and modern art |
Friedberg, A., The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze in Modernity: Flâneur/Flâneuse” in VCR
Barth, R., “The Face of Garbo” in CR
|
11 |
Politics and economy of the vision. Institutionalizing the visuality in space, making culture and identity...
|
Mirzoeff Nicholas, An Introduction to Visual Culture, (2003) “Diana’s Death: Gender, Photography and inaguguration of global visual culture” Routledge.
Duncan, C., “The Modern Art Museum” in VCR |
12 | Institutionalizing the visual phenomena in space, making culture and identity... Politics and economy of the vision (cont.) |
Clifford, J:; “ On Collecting Art and Culture” in VCR
Readings: Metz, C., “ The imaginary Signifier” in FT |
13 | Resisting to the dominant form of representation and to read visual representation in opposing narrative..... |
Rosler, M., (1990), "Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment", in CR
Ballard, “Introduction to Crash”, in CR |
.14 |
Artistic practices and ideology in the age of so-called postmodernism... Facing with unstable, “here and now”
|
Appandurai, Arjun. “Here and Now”, VCR |
15 |
Last but not least: What do we expect for the “future” look? New media, cyberspace and human
|
Harraway and cyborg...
Overview of the term and discussion |
Recommended Sources
RECOMMENDED SOURCES | |
Textbook |
John Berger, Way of Seeing / Görme Biçimleri
R. Stam, & T. Miller, Film and Theory: An Anthology, NY: Blackwell, 2000 (FT) Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Detroit: Black & Red, 1983. N. Mirzoeff, The Visual Culture Reader, London/NY: Routledge, 1998, 1999 (VCR) N. Mirzoeff, An inroduction to visual culture, Routledge 1999
Eagleton Terry, Postmodernizmin Yanılsamaları, Ayrıntı, 1996
Hall Stuart and Evans, Jessica (eds) Visual Culture: The Reader, Sage, Open Uni. 1999 |
Additional Resources | During the term, a long list of related essays will be handed out and students will responsible for them in adition to every week’s reading material. |
Material Sharing
MATERIAL SHARING | |
Documents | Deriving from the materials of daily life –film, architecture, television, streets, cafes, homes, shopping malls- the students will correlate the theory wih the material of the subject. Additional homework would be furthered depending on their participants. |
Assignments | Presentations and discussions of material and essays in everyweek, paper submission for the mid-term |
Exams | Final paper |
Assessment
ASSESSMENT | ||
IN-TERM STUDIES | NUMBER | PERCENTAGE |
Mid-terms | 1 | 30 |
Assignments and presentations | 6 | 30 |
1 | 60 | |
Total | 100 | |
CONTRIBUTION OF FINAL EXAMINATION TO OVERALL GRADE | 40 | |
CONTRIBUTION OF IN-TERM STUDIES TO OVERALL GRADE | 60 | |
Total | 100 |
Course’s Contribution to Program
COURSE'S CONTRIBUTION TO PROGRAM | ||||||
No | Program Learning Outcomes | Contribution | ||||
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
1 | To develop the scientific cognition, comprehensive knowledge of critical theories, concepts and scientific data collection methods and to be competent in discussion skills in the field of media and communication. | X | ||||
2 | To be able to define and analyze the historical development of mass communication in relation with its social and cultural results. | X | ||||
3 | To be able to relate the contemporary concepts like post-modernism, globalization, post-colonialism, post-structuralism to the tradition of critical thought which is constructed on mass media. | X | ||||
4 | To be able to analyze and discuss the economical, political and cultural facts and developments which are mediated by the forms of mass media, and their impacts on social life. | X | ||||
5 | To be able to define the interdisciplinary structure of cultural studies and to be able to interpret the mutual effects between the traditional scientific disciplines and communication studies. | X | ||||
6 | To be competent in the classical and modern aesthetic theories established in audio, visual and written history of art, and to be able to analyze and discuss the narrative types and styles under the light of these theories. | X | ||||
7 | To be able to critically evaluate how political actions and actors in social life use mass media and the way that they take place in them, in connection with their sociopolitical results. | X | ||||
8 | To be able to comprehend the national and international relationship of broadcasting policies and to be able to evaluate the social and cultural causes and effects accordingly. | |||||
9 | To be able to recognize the economical and cultural operations at the national and international levels, through the relations of media ownership, their channels and the media products, and to be able to connect and combine with the marketing techniques and items. | X | ||||
10 | To be able to connect the marketing techniques, devises and styles with media theories, and to be able to examine the practice methods. | |||||
11 | To be able to name the theoretical studies on national and international film history and culture, and to be able to recognize the major examples and to correlate them with theories. | X | ||||
12 | To be competent in the distinct writing formats of narrative styles of film and television, and to be able to apply them. | |||||
13 | To be able to recognize the technical structures and potentials of the mass media, and to be able to follow the technological developments and to apply them. | |||||
14 | To be able to scrutinize advanced aesthetic approaches and the visual effects with the national and international examples and to be able to apply them skillfully. | X | ||||
15 | To be able to combine the narrative genres, the aesthetic approaches, technical knowledge and the theoretical knowledge in media and communication with a creative design, and to become skillful at embodying it with a project. | X |
ECTS
ECTS ALLOCATED BASED ON STUDENT WORKLOAD BY THE COURSE DESCRIPTION | |||
Activities | Quantity |
Duration (Hour) |
Total Workload (Hour) |
Course Duration (Including the exam week: 16x Total course hours) | 16 | 3 | 48 |
Hours for off-the-classroom study (Pre-study, practice) | 16 | 3 | 48 |
Mid-terms | 1 | 10 | 10 |
Assignments and presentations | 6 | 4 | 24 |
Final paper | 1 | 20 | 20 |
Total Work Load | 150 | ||
Total Work Load / 25 (h) | 6 | ||
ECTS Credit of the Course | 6 |