Course overview
This course is about ethical visual representations of culture and cultural difference. It looks at a wide variety of visual media (including art, photography, film, video, and digital technologies) to explore the ways in which these shape both the perception, and the experience, of socio-cultural change. Throughout the course, an emphasis is placed on the inherent power of images: Their ability to shape our own cultural experiences, to cast cultural 'others' in particular ways, and to act as a mode of resisting other people's stereotypes. A particular focus is placed on the production and circulation of visual narratives which, when paired with written narratives, mediate our cultural contact zones. It is in these moments of contact - in postcolonial encounters, in ethnographic research, and in the algorithmic mediations of cyberspace - that people construct ideas about themselves and others.
Course learning outcomes
- A secure and accurate understanding of key concepts and theoretical approaches in visual Anthropology, including how colonisation and decolonisation have influenced the production of visual content.
- An understanding of the wider inter-disciplinary context of research into human societies and behaviour.
- Knowledge of the impact of colonisation on First Nations, Aboriginal, and Indigenous populations–including the ability to identify how settler histories have impacted their visual representations.
- Capacity to understand and recognise central or key anthropological questions and ethical problems.
- Ability to apply anthropological knowledge and research methods to a variety of real-world contexts.
- Capacity to produce visual narratives that are supported by written narratives.
- Knowledge of the appropriate and available technologies for conducting effective and ethical research.
- Ability to draw on digital technologies in ways that enhance meaningful research outcomes.
- A recognition of social and cultural issues, and their ethnical implications, in a global context in terms of the production and generation of Anthropological research and knowledge.