HHIS-401: Critical Histories 1

This course is a weekly 3-hour seminar in which students build a strong foundation in the theories and discourses surrounding visual culture, mass media, and design. Rather than proceeding chronologically, students investigate ideas through a series of overlapping and interrelated thematics with the goal of developing frameworks that enable a robust and critically engaged media design practice. The course materials will address a variety of media and design practices as they intersect with key theoretical discourses. Most of the texts will focus on topics related to American and European visual culture, but not to the exclusion of other cultural and geographic contexts. Course materials will be examined from a variety of perspectives, and will explore questions of modernity, textuality, visuality, technology, gender, race, and globalization.