Visual anthropology is a subfield of anthropology and focuses on the study of photography, films and other media forms. Humans are both producers and consumers of visual materials. The production and consumption of visual materials are, however, culture-specific but also universal. The course intends to familiarize students with the production and interpretation of visual culture. The twelve lectures are clustered into technical, theoretical, agency and interpretation of visual culture. The course begins with an epistemological discussion on the technical aspect of visual anthropology with minimum knowledge of the nature of light, photography and principles of visual anthropology. The second part of the course takes on ethnography films and agency as the embodiment of post-colonial anthropology. Students will be able to debate Theories in visual anthropology with subjectivity, agency and reflexivity at the core of the discussion. This is further enriched with debates on image production during the colonial and post-colonial periods with examples drawn from the Americas and Africa. Visual anthropology is an unsettled field of study with fascinating debates on the politics and poetics of representation and identity formation through image.
Mitiku TESFAYE
Séminaire
English
Autumn 2023-2024
Continuous assessment with 2/4 of the total mark
2 projects for 1/4 of the total marks
Final exam with ¼ of the total mark
Asch, Timothy, Asen Balikci, Emilie De Brigard, Edmund Carpenter, Foster O. Chanock, John Collier, Robert F. Forston, et al. 2021. Principles of Visual Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112415405.
Boellstorff et al. Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method. 2012. Princeton: Princeton University Press