Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0129 - Writers Envy Photography

Since its invention, photography has produced both anxiety and fascination for writers and writing. This course will ask why writers envy photography, setting out from two significant moments for the West: 19th-century American literature, in which photography is associated with ideas about representation, scientific reason, and autobiography; and the European avant-garde movements of the 1920s and 1930s, in which it is identified with the unconscious, revolution, and utopia. An initial focus on these moments will allow us to expand our inquiry to other geocultural scenes (imperial Latin America, postcolonial Africa). Does photography give rise to new modes of perception, introspection, and description or merely to new metaphors for them? How do different types of inscription affect the nature of subjective experience or of historical consciousness? Possible readings in Douglass, Emerson, Whitman, Benjamin, Brassai, Breton, Proust, Kracauer, and Freud.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Independent Work Multiple Cultural Perspectives Writing and Research In this course, students are expected to spend at least 6-8 hours per week in preparation and work outside of class time.