LCST3462

According to Jean Baudrillard, the primary achievement of Western modernity has not been the globalization of capitalism, but "the aestheticization of the whole world... its transformation into images." Beginning from the position that the history of modernity has been a history of visualization, this course seeks to interrogate the modern era's incessant development and distribution of new technologies of visual perception andrepresentation. Considering a diverse range of such technologies -- including the primary instruments of modern mass media (print, photography, advertising, cinema, TV) and other dimensions of modern visual culture (optical toys, panoramas, detective novels, surveillance cameras, train rides, x-rays, and more) -- we will analyze the specific historical forces driving the invention of modern visuality, while also examining the broader political implications of modern visual culture. Topics include: the emergence of the modern "observer"; representation, information, and the society of the spectacle; hyperstimulus and urban space; the cinema of attractions; criminal photography and the archive; the mass ornament; perspective and subjectivity; surrealism, dada, and modernism's optical unconscious; the critique of ocularcentrism; gender and consumer culture, and others. Screenings include: Eadward Muybridge, Zoopraxographer, Die Strasse, Fantomas, The Hazards of Helen, Entr'acte, Un Chien Andalou, Tierra Sin Pan, The Naked City, Eyes, Eureka, and others.Readings by: Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Rosalind Krauss, TJ Clark, Tom Gunning, Jonathan Crary, Erwin Panofsky, Martin Jay, Ben Singer, Vanessa Schwartz, Allan Sekula, Jean-Louis Comolli, Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Mary Ann Doane, and others.