Ways Of Seeing Exploring Visual Culture

AY2025/2026 Semester 1

This course is designed for students interested in studying the interrelated realms of art history and visual culture. Maintaining focus on ways of seeing and the visual, we will study key works of art in a global field across periods spanning ca. 2500 BCE to the contemporary. Each week's learning activities will centre around specific case studies as a starting point for exploration. We will analyse art objects by situating them within debates and discourses specific to their production and reception. We will learn to use different methodological approaches and major theoretical frameworks (for instance postcolonialism, feminism, post-digital inquiry, surveillance theories, and ecocriticism) and core concepts (for instance representation, mimesis, modernism, race, spectacle, surveillance, resistance, post-truth) and develop foundational skills pertaining to analytical writing (such as framing an argument, compiling a bibliography and so on).