History | Colloq Latin American History H665 | 28397 | D. James
Topic: Photography and Historiography A portion reserved for
majors, open to graduates only Photographic images form an
increasingly prevalent supplement to historical research. Yet
they are still rarely analyzed critically or theoretically. The
power and meaning of the visual is largely taken as self evident
and self-explanatory. They are a visual flourish to the
essential drive of the traditional archival work that underlies
the historical narrative. The aim of this course is twofold.
First it seeks to introduce the student to a range of critical
writings on photography and the visual. This will involve
engaging with selected texts by writers such as Roland Barthes,
Walter Benjamin, Alan Trachtenburg, John Tagg, John Berger,
Ariella Azoulay, Jens Anderman(among others). The varied
critical approaches to viewing and interpreting the photographic
image will be explored. These critical readings will form the
core of the first section, “Photography