Culture and Image

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 4
• Convenor: Professor Akane Kawakami
• Assessment: a 1500-word essay (50%) and 1500-word take-home test (50%)

In this module we introduce you to the study of visual cultures across a variety of periods and language-speaking areas. We will explore a range of visual arts such as painting, illustration, photography, graphic novels, manga and anime, as well as cinema. You will gain the skills to analyse different visual media, learn about their histories and how they have developed in different cultural contexts. You will also engage with significant theoretical ideas in the study of visual cultures.

A key aim of the module is to enable you to understand and engage with cultures comparatively, allowing you to compare and contrast histories and cultural production across more than one language-speaking area.

Indicative syllabus

• Studying visual cultures: introduction, histories, key skills, theories, genres
• Studying cinema: introduction, histories, key skills, theories, genres
• Depicting the nation: nineteenth-century German historical painting
• Jean-Baptiste Debret: picturing Brazil
• Art at war: Picasso’s Guernica and propaganda posters
• Embodying knowledge: text and image in the Encylopédie (illustration)
• Film and politics: Fassbinder
• Fellini’s La Dolce Vita
• Japanese visual art (photography)
• Photography: Guibert

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• understand aspects of the history of visual media across French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish-speaking cultural contexts
• understand the differential development of visual media across these language-speaking areas
• compare and contrast histories and cultural production across more than one language-speaking area
• use key skills to analyse visual media
• understand key theoretical ideas in the study visual cultures
• analyse visual culture in writing
• engage in academic discussion about visual cultures.