Document Type
Syllabus
Publication Date
Fall 9-1-2024
Course Description
This course focuses on photography’s entanglement in American systems of social power, especially race, gender, and sexuality. It investigates how the medium has been used as a tool of empowerment as well as subjugation in the contexts of fine art, activism, and visual culture more broadly. The course gives particular focus to the role of photography in struggles for liberation by marginalized people, from photography’s invention in the mid-nineteenth century to the present. In addition to this historical and political context, students learn visual analysis skills, are introduced to the technical aspects of various photographic processes, and gain fluency in photography-specific vocabulary.
Recommended Citation
Cowan, Sarah, "ARTH 390A Histories of Photography Cowan Fall 2024" (2024). All Course Syllabi. 898, Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University.
https://scholarship.depauw.edu/records_syllabi/898
Student Outcomes
Students will be able to: Grow their sensitivity to how photographs look and feel by analyzing the formal elements of images using the discipline-specific vocabulary of art history as well as the technical language of the photographic medium. Engage with the manifold social and historical contexts in which photographic images are situated, especially discourses of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Thoughtfully analyze scholarly texts and deploy interdisciplinary scholarly methods. Synthesize ideas about photography in persuasive and vivid writing and speech in order to generate original evaluations of photography’s dual identity as a tool of empowerment and oppression