VCC201H5S Introduction to Visual Culture (HUM)
(Formerly FAH201H5/CCT201H5)
Introduces the ways in which we use and understand images across the realms of art, advertising, mass media, and science, with examples drawn from painting, photography, film, television, and new media. Presents a diverse range of recent approaches to visual analysis and key theories of visual culture. [24L, 12T]
Exclusion: FAH201H5, CCT201H5
Prerequisite: CCT100H5/CCT109H5 or FAH105H5/FAH202H5
VCC207H5S Urban Sites and Sounds (HUM)
Introduces students to histories and theories of urban spaces emphasizing the modern city. Drawing from history, architecture, geography, and media studies, the course explores how urban change is evident in the spaces, forms, and sounds of the modern city. Case studies of specific urban environments depending on instructor's research emphasis. [24L, 12T]
Prerequisite: VCC201H5
VCC209H5F Society and Spectacle (HUM) pdf
Spectacles have been vehicles of social and political power at varying historical moments and locations. Since Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle was published in 1967 the term has been deployed as a critical concept for thinking about visual culture. This course takes up a number of historical case studies in order to locate and situate phenomena associated with spectacle and spectacular visual entertainments. Topics may include the role of images in mediating contemporary social relations and the connection between spectacle and violence.
Prerequisite: VCC201H5
VCC304H5S Visual Culture and the Politics of Identity (HUM)
Examines the ways in which social-cultural identities are constructed by, and at times disrupt various visual technologies, logics, and representational strategies. Issues and problems to be addressed include: nationality, stereotyping, invisibility, and surveillance. Course materials will be drawn from modern and contemporary art and visual culture, and will also include readings from the fields of feminism, race studies, queer theory, and performance studies. [24L]
Prerequisite: CCT200H5/VCC201H5 or P.I.
VCC306H5F Visual Culture and Colonialism (HUM)
Many of our most popular and influential image technologies, visual forms, and ways of thinking about images first developed in the second half of the 19th century: the heyday of European colonialism. This course re-examines the visual culture of modernity in the light of this deeply colonial genealogy, through forms such as photography, colour printing, film, exhibitions, postcards, maps, scientific illustrations, and the body as image.
Prerequisite: VCC201H5
VCC308H5F Activism in Visual and Media Culture (HUM)
This course will examine political and social activism in visual and media culture focusing on the role that visual representation has played in social movements and how artists/activists have employed visual media to achieve specific ends that challenge and resist dominant visual representations and political formations.[24L,12P]
Prerequisite: VCC201
VCC310H5F Audio Art In The Visual Field (HUM)
This course will survey the recent literature and examine the tactics and strategies by which audio art interrupts, infects, and interpenetrates the visual field. The course will investigate the methods utilized by contemporary artists to diffuse sound through various media: installation, performance, video, cinema, recording, radio, and the internet. Issues of intention and reception will be considered in the same breath as issues of technique and technology. The course will examine key terms such as silence, noise, voice, speech, echo, and listening.
Prerequisite: VCC201H5
VCC336H5S North American Consumer Culture: 1890-Present (HUM)
Examines the history and theoretical treatments of mass consumerism in North American society. We will look at the relationship between the market and cultural politics, cultural production, and mass consumption. Specific topics include: the shift from mass production to mass consumption; the growth of department stores; the rise of advertising; the relationship of race, class and gender to consumer capitalism; the development of product brands; and the emergence of global marketing. [24L]
Exclusion: HIS336H5
Prerequisite: VCC201H5/HIS271Y5
Previously HIS336H5
VCC340H5S Monsters (HUM)
This course examines monster movies and television shows alongside readings from monster literature, comics, and critical essays. It considers the social significance of the monster in order to learn something about how the threat of the monster relates to historical anxieties concerning mass-media technologies, social deviance, and the hybrid forms of visual media culture that we typically associate with the era of 21st-century convergence culture but define the genre of monster media from its ancient beginnings.
Prerequisite: VCC201H5
VCC400H5S Advanced Project (HUM) pdf
This course is designed to serve as a capstone course for VCC specialists. Students engage with advanced readings in the field and refine skills in critical analysis of selected topics in VCC. A major focus is the design and implementation of an advanced research project selected in consultation with an instructor. Topic: Video Games and the Visual Culture of Play [36S]
Exclusion: CCT400H5, HSC400H5
Prerequisite: VCC 201H5 and completion of 13.0 credits. Open only to VCC specialists.
VCC409H5F Capital, Spectacle, War (HUM)
This course investigates the conjunction of contemporary global capitalism, spectacle, and militarized neo-liberal governmentality in order to develop a critical understanding of the inter-related forces that constitute the most current and politically and ethically pressing events in the world today. These may include the war on terror, the disaster film genre, technologies of surveillance, politics of humiliation and scandal, and theological and financial speculation and visions of the future. Readings will draw upon both historical and in many cases the latest work in political theory, cinema and new media studies, critical philosophy, and religious studies.
Prerequisite: VCC201H5, VCC209H5 plus at least 1.0 in VCC
VCC427H5F Participatory Media (HUM)
In order to explore the complex social and political issues surrounding the discourse of democratic participation in today’s "new media" culture, this course provides a historical and theoretical survey of "old" media technologies that embrace the aesthetics of participation, running from popular theatre forms (including vaudeville and Chautauqua) to call-in radio shows, avant-garde and novelty films, activist video art, and the audience-based talk and game shows of fifties television that most directly prefigure the participatory genres of contemporary media programming.
Prerequisite: VCC201H5 plus at least 1.0 in VCC