Critical Social Thought 349VC - Advanced Topics: 'Victorian Literature and Visual Culture'

This course will examine literary texts that represent new forms of visuality in nineteenth-century Britain as well as examples of visual culture that provide a framework for reading Victorian culture in innovative ways. We will study nineteenth-century photography--portraiture, prison photography, imperial photographs, and private and popular erotic images--as well as novels and autobiographical writing that engage with new photographic technology and its transformation of the ways in which Victorians understood identity, politics, aesthetics, and representation. The course will take a similar approach to painting, literary illustration, political cartoons and caricature, and advertising.

Prereq: 4 credits in English at the 300 level.