Wars of Images

Students will develop an awareness of the fundamental historicity of vision and of the specific ways of meaning production proper to the visual dimension. They will become familiar with the methodologies and conceptual framework of aesthetics and visual culture studies for critical analysis. The course will provide them with a set of tools for examining the role of visual media in shaping cultural hegemony, reframing wars, and inflecting public opinion over social and political issues, also taking into account the complex set of discursive and bodily practices which underpin our relationship to images.

By the end of the course, students will be able to master and discuss some of the fundamental notions of visual culture (gaze, scopic regime, visual attention, strategies of visualization, and so on) and put them into practice for the critical analysis of visual documents in order to single out emerging issues as well as social and political implications. They will have acquired the ability to critically understand the dynamics of power, the conflicts, and the resistance that images bear, by identifying the multilayered manifestations of social agency expressed within the visual sphere. By leveraging the set of competencies acquired, they will be able to develop autonomous and original interpretations.