Critical Social Inquiry 0290 - Image, Icon, Object, Fetish

What do pictures want? Do they want to be looked at, loved, analyzed, comprehended, worshipped,reproduced, and weaponized or simply acknowledged as life forms that live in the minds of their beholders?What if they harbor a divine or satanic presence? What is the meaning constituted by their media andmaterialities? What is their power over the beholder? Do images ever die? How do objects become fetishes?How do colonization and racism destroy and change the meanings of images and objects? Case studies will include miracle working Byzantine icons; contact relics of the Virgin Mary; Kongolese minkisi or powerfigures; the emergence of the "male" as well as "modern" gaze that freezes and objectifies as well as themedieval "female" religious gaze that animates and worships; the politics of Renaissance perspective; an-iconic Islamic art; ephemeral wax figures; racialized imagery and the question of interiority

In/Justice Students should expect to spend 6-8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time