98年第1學期-0175 文討：視覺文化研究 課程資訊

評分方式

評分項目	配分比例	說明
Midterm In-class Presentation	15	In-class presentation on topics provided by the instructor
Midterm Essay	15	Short writing assignment on topics provided by the instructor
Final Paper	54	Active participation is essential in any seminar
Participation	20	Active participation is essential in any seminar

教育目標

A recent scholarly study boldly states that “our primary way of understanding the world is now visual, and not textual.” (Mirzoeff, 1999) The purpose of this seminar is to evaluate the validity of this claim and examine how and why visual culture has become so influential. In this seminar students: 1. attempt to define visual culture and map this growing field. 2. examine a wide range of visual genres: photography, advertising, cinema, virtual reality, streets and public spaces, etc.. 3. reflect critically on the history and functions of visual media as: sources of entertainment, commercial products, and ideological constructs. 4. compare and contrast Western and Chinese/Asian visual cultures and ways of seeing. 5. work with critical terms in the field of cultural studies (race, class, gender, ideology, spectatorship, etc.) and develop stronger reading skills.

課程概述

Visual Cultural Studies is a seminar for third- and fourth-year students. A recent scholarly study boldly states that “our primary way of understanding the world is now visual, and not textual” (Mirzoeff 1999). The purpose of this seminar is to evaluate the validity of this claim and examine how and why visual culture has become so influential in the contemporary world. Students will also endeavor to sketch, as far as time permits, the history of modern visual culture from the invention of photography in the 1830s and the birth of cinematography in the 1890s to the World Wide Web. Special attention will be focused on such issues as: Jeremy Bentham’s notion of panopticism and the emergence of the monitored society; the representation of the other (i.e. racial, cultural, social, extraterrestial others) in visual culture; the place of advertising in modern culture; cityscapes in photography and film; the visual production of gender; and utopianism and dystopianism in film and cyberspace.

基本資料

選修課，學分數：2-0
上課時間：三/1,2[FL002]
修課班級：外文系3,4
修課年級：年級以上
選課備註：1.畢業前須修兩門文討 2需填寫申請單

參考書目

John Berger: Ways of Seeing (1972) and About Looking (1980)
Nicholas Mirzoeff , ed.: The Visual Culture Reader (1998)
Susan Sontag, On Photography (1977)
Emmanuelle Toulet, Cinema is 100 Years Old (1995)
Instructor’s handouts and Powerpoint presentations

Films and documentaries: Rear Window, Blade Runner, National Geographic
Photographers, The Lumière Brothers and George Méliès.

Film clips from a.o.: Farenheit 451, THX-1138, King Kong, Planet of the
Apes, Saving Private Ryan, Brazil, 2001: A Space Odyssey,
Metropolis, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The Third Man,
The French Connection, Taxi Driver, The Matrix, Modern Times,
Psycho, Peeping Tom, Body Double, Cinema Paradiso.