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Program Type: 
Thesis
Course Code: 
RTC 531
Semester: 
Autumn
Course Type: 
Core
P: 
3
Lab: 
0
Credits: 
3
ECTS: 
6
Course Language: 
English
Courses given by: 
Course Objectives: 

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.

Course Content: 

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.

Teaching Methods: 
1: Lecture, 2: Question-Answer, 3: Discussion, 4: Case Study
Assessment Methods: 
A: Testing, B: Homework, D: Presentation

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