Lester L Faigley

This course aims to make you a better writer, a better photographer, and a better analyst of images. We will look at the issues which have pre-occupied practitioners and theorists of this medium for the past century and a half, from the daguerreotypists of the 1830s and 40s through to the new issues raised by today's digital work. We will visit a large exhibition of photography, Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection, in the Ransom Center. One of our projects will be based on this exhibition. Expect to write eight short discussion-board essays in response to our readings and viewings, make a presentation and write an essay about a photograph in the Gernsheim collection, and complete an original documentary project. The documentary project will consist of 10-20 photographs and 1500-2000 words of explanatory text. The text and photographs should present an understandable, engaging, 'picture' of the subject, but the writing and the photos should each stand on their own.

Grading:

Discussion board essays: 25% Presentation on photograph: 5% Project 1: 5% Project 2: 20% Project 3: 35% Project 4: 10%

Required Texts:


The Little Penguin Handbook, Second edition, MLA update. Faigley. New York: Longman, 2009. ISBN 0205743390

The Book of Photography: The History, the Technique, the Art, the Future. Hoy. National Geographic, 2005. ISBN 978-0792236931

Handout essays and online readings and viewing

Required Equipment:
 A camera, preferably a 2MB+ digital camera

This course aims to make you a better writer, a better photographer, and a better analyst of images. We will look at the issues which have pre-occupied practitioners and theorists of this medium for the past century and a half, from the daguerreotypists of the 1830s and 40s through to the new issues raised by today's digital work. We will visit a large exhibition of photography, Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection, in the Ransom Center. One of our projects will be based on this exhibition. Expect to write eight short discussion-board essays in response to our readings and viewings, make a presentation and write an essay about a photograph in the Gernsheim collection, and complete an original documentary project. The documentary project will consist of 10-20 photographs and 1500-2000 words of explanatory text. The text and photographs should present an understandable, engaging, 'picture' of the subject, but the writing and the photos should each stand on their own.

Grading:

Discussion board essays: 25% Presentation on photograph: 5% Project 1: 5% Project 2: 20% Project 3: 35% Project 4: 10%

Required Texts:

The Little Penguin Handbook, Second edition, MLA update. Faigley. New York: Longman, 2009. ISBN 0205743390

The Book of Photography: The History, the Technique, the Art, the Future. Hoy. National Geographic, 2005. ISBN 978-0792236931

Handout essays and online readings and viewing

Required Equipment: A camera, preferably a 2MB+ digital camera

This course aims to make you a better writer, a better photographer, and a better analyst of images. We will look at the issues which have pre-occupied practitioners and theorists of this medium for the past century and a half, from the daguerreotypists of the 1830s and 40s through to the new issues raised by today's digital work. We will visit a large exhibition of photography, Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection, in the Ransom Center. One of our projects will be based on this exhibition.

Expect to write eight short discussion-board essays in response to our readings and viewings, make a presentation and write an essay about a photograph in the Gernsheim collection, and complete an original documentary project. The documentary project will consist of 10-20 photographs and 1500-2000 words of explanatory text. The text and photographs should present an understandable, engaging, 'picture' of the subject, but the writing and the photos should each stand on their own.

Grading:

Discussion board essays: 25%

Presentation on photograph: 5%

Project 1: 5%

Project 2: 20%

Project 3: 35%

Project 4: 10%

Required Texts:

The Little Penguin Handbook, Second edition, MLA update. Faigley. New York: Longman, 2009. ISBN 0205743390

The Book of Photography: The History, the Technique, the Art, the Future. Hoy. National Geographic, 2005. ISBN 978-0792236931

Handout essays and online readings and viewingRequired Equipment:

A camera, preferably a 2MB+ digital camera

This course aims to make you a better writer, a better analyst of visual texts, a better visual thinker, and a better producer of multimedia texts. We will examine visual texts ranging from paintings in the Blanton Museum to photography on Flickr, video games, comics, "green" advertising, and online videos.

Expect to write seven short discussion-board essays and posts in response to our readings and viewings, make an oral presentation, and complete four projects. The final project will be a video project examining YouTube.

Grading

Please note that there will be penalties for late work: two points for each calendar day late for discussion board essays; four points for each calendar day late for projects.  The late penalty applies to both drafts and final versions. You must attend class from the beginning on workshop days to receive credit.

Points Possible

7 discussion essays/posts – 25
Oral Presentation – 5
Project 1 – 10
Projects 2-5 (20 each) – 60

Required Texts

The Little Penguin Handbook, Second edition, MLA update. Faigley. 2009. ISBN 0205743390
handouts and online readings and viewings

Required Equipment

A camera, preferably a 2MB+ digital camera

What kind of writing does photography stimulate, whether critical or imaginative? This course takes an extensive look at the issues which have pre-occupied practitioners and theorists of this medium for the past century and a half, from the daguerreotypists of the 1830s and 40s through to the new issues raised by today's digital work. Topics which we will discuss include the ways in which one might "read" a photographic image; questions of art, technology, the machine, and the eye; documentary and news photography; photographic portraiture; personal photographs, the family album, and the role of the photograph in autobiography; advertising and commodity culture; gender, desire, and the representation of the body; "truth," realism, evidence, and faking; contexts of display and exhibition; photography and history/nostalgia; and the role of photography in education.

Expect to write informal short responses to our readings and viewings, write two essays on issues in photography, and complete a documentary photo project. The documentary photo project will consist of 15-30 photographs, and 1500-2000 words of explanatory text. The text and photographs should, together, present an understandable, engaging, 'picture' of the subject, but the writing and the photos should each stand on their own.

Grading:
Attendance, preparation, and participation in daily activities are required.
The course fulfills the upper-division SWC requirement.
Short writing assignments: 20%
Two essays on issues in photography: 20% each
Documentary project: 40%

Required Texts:
_The Photography Reader_. Wells. 2003. ISBN 0-415-24661-X
_Doing Documentary Work_. Coles. 1998. ISBN 0-19-512495-2
_The Little Penguin Handbook_. Faigley. 2007. ISBN 0-321-24401-X

Required Equipment:
A camera, preferably a 2MB+ digital camera

Since the early decades of the nineteenth century, when advances in printing, paper manufacture, and engraving made cheap, mass-produced images broadly available, Western culture has been characterized as a visual culture. During the twentieth century visual technologies proliferated, especially in new electronic forms. In the last decade the World Wide Web has made it possible for individuals to publish multimedia texts that formerly required entire production departments and studios.

In spite of the proliferation of images in our culture and the ease of producing and publishing them, they remain a neglected area of study within the humanities. In the first half of the course, students will examine the modern history of visual culture. In the second half, they will focus more particularly on the combination of text, images, and other graphics, both in print and in multimedia formats. They will explore a range of scholarship that extends from the rise of illustrated newspapers and new image technologies in the nineteenth century to digital imaging and the multimedia Web.