AS 4725 - The Photograph and American Culture

Credits: 4

This course complicates our understanding of the photograph. How does a medium that seems to transparently show the truth, help make America’s truths? This course explores photography’s power to document and create an America both imaginary and real. We will examine how the photographic image and its dissemination constructs U.S. national and social identities, shaping attitudes about America’s heroes and marginalized groups; territorial expansion; the American Dream and American social inequality across time. In this course students will learn: how photographs helped record and shape American history; to understand the visual language and rhetoric of photography; to utilize photographs and text to make an argument about America today.

Prerequisites
EMS

When Offered:
Occasionally.