Visual Culture Student Focus Group

This group meets bi-weekly to discuss readings, review one anothers' work and collaborate on projects like the Visualizing Trans Exhibition. If you would like to join our mailing list and gain access to the readings, or suggest a topic for a future meeting or project, please email Amy Powell.

Fall 2009 Schedule:

The Visual Culture Student Focus Group operates using a Learn@UW site. If you would like to have access to the group's Learn@UW site where you can see details about our readings and meetings, please email Amy Powell, visualculture@eduction.wisc.edu.

Spring 2008 Schedule:

Thursday, January 31
Introduction to Visualizing Science: Readings from Visual Cultures of Science (2006)
"Introduction: The Role of Visual Representation in the Production of Scientific Reality" p.vii-xix.

Luc Pauwels, "A Theoretical Framework for Assessing Visual Representational Practices in Knowledge Building and Science Communications" p.1-25.

Michael Lynch, "The Production of Scientific Images: Vision and Re-Vision in the History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science" p.26-40.

Fall 2007 Schedule:

Wednesday, August 1
Norman Bryson and Kaja Silverman from foundational Visual Culture Texts
Norman Bryson, "Semiology and Visual Interpretation" in Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation. Bryson, Holly & Moxey, eds. (New York and London: Harper Collings, 1991): 61-73.

Norman Bryson, "Gericault and 'Masculinity'" in Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations. Bryson, Holly & Moxey, eds. (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University, 1994): 229-259.

Kaja Silverman, "Fassbinder and Lacan: A Reconsideration of Gaze, Look and Image" in Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations. Bryson, Holly & Moxey, eds. (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University, 1994): 272-301.

Wednesday, August 15
Norman Bryson and Kaja Silverman on the object
Norman Bryson, "The Post-Ideological Avant-Garde" in Inside/Out: New Chinese Art, Gao Minglu, ed. (Berkeley, LA and London: University of California Press, 1998): 51-8.

Norman Bryson, "Westernizing Bodies: Women, Art, and Power in Meiji Yoga" in Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson and Maribeth Graybill, eds. (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003): 89-118.

Kaja Silverman and Harun Faocki, sections from Speaking about Godard. New York and London: NYU Press, 1998.


Wednesday, August 29
Kaja Silverman and critical theory
Kaja Silverman, World Spectators. Stanford: Standford UP, 2000.

Optional for this week: selections from Kaja Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988.

Monday, September 10
Norman Bryson and Kaja Silverman on photography
Norman Bryson, "Boston School" in Boston School (Boston: ICA, 1995): 19-43.

Kaja Silverman, "The Screen" from The Threshold of the Visible World. New York: Routledge, 1996


Monday, September 24
Hamid Naficy and "Accented Cinema"
Hamid Naficy, "Introduction" and "Situating Accented Cinema" in An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001): 3-39.

Hamid Naficy, "Lured by the East: Ethnographic and Expedition Films About Nomadic Tribes--The Case of Grass (1925)" in Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel, Jeffrey Ruoff, ed. (Durham & London: Duke UP, 2006): 117-138.


Monday, October 8
Norman Bryson, Kaja Silverman and Visual Theory: Interruption, Interference, Intervention
Meet in the Hagan Room of the Chazen Art Museum (Art History Department hallway), 5:00pm. NOTE THE CHANGE IN MEETING PLACE.

Roland Barthes, "Denotation and Connotation" from Elements of Semiology, Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, trans. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1968): 89-99.

Christian Metz, From "The Imaginary Signifier" in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds. (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004): 820-836.

Charles Peirce, ""Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs" from The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings. Justus Buchler, ed. (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1956): 98-119.

Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "Introduction: The Question Then..." and "Conclusion: From Chaos to the Brain" from What Is Philosophy?. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell trans. (New York: Columbia UP, 1994): 1-12, 201-233.

Monday, October 22
Finbarr Barry Flood, "Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum," The Art Bulletin, Vol. 84, No. 4. (Dec., 2002), pp. 641-659.

Mazyar Lotfalian, excerpts from Islam, Technoscientific Identities, and the Culture of Curiosity. Dallas, Lanham, Boulder, NY and Oxford: University Press of America, Inc.: 2004.

Monday, November 5
Jessica Winegar and Contmporary Egyption art production
Jessica Winegar, "Muhammad Mukhtar, Al-Ginubi: Season of Migration to the North" and "Cultural Authenticity, Artistic Personhood, and Frames of Evaluation" in Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2006): 81-130.

Monday, November 19
Student Presentations

Monday, December 3
Student Presentations

Opportunities