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Visual Communication

Visualizing America

This course will examine the role images play in America’s self-understanding and the values these images exemplify and promote. In examining the ways in which such images may be understood and analyzed, we will look first at one of the greatest depictors of American  life, the painter, Norman Rockwell. We will also look at scholarship whose wide scope deals with everything from political cartoons to photojournalism. We will look critically at the methods this scholarship exemplifies under the reigning assumption that the meaning of texts that involve images and words must be the product of their interaction.

Books required for this seminar 
Hennessey, Maureen Hart. Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People. High Museum of Art: Atlanta: 1999. ISBN: 978-0-8109-6392-4

Lester C. Olson, Cara Finnegan, and Diane S. Hope. Visual Rhetoric. Los Angeles: Sage, 2008. ISBN 9781412949194

Hariman, Robert and John Lucaites. No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-226-31606-2

Syllabus
Week    1. Rockwell, 1-80
2. Rockwell, 81-129
3. Rockwell, 130-186
4. Biesecker, Blair and Michel, and Abramson
5. Brower, Cloud, Edwards
6. Ericson and Finnegan
7. Harold and DeLuca; Haskins
8. Lancioni; Morris and Sloop
9. Olson ; Twigg
10. Shields; Stromer
11. No Caption Needed, Chapters 1 and 2.
12. No Caption Needed, Chapters 3 and 4
13. No Caption Needed, Chapters 5 and 6
14. No Caption Needed, Chapters 7, 8.
15. No Caption Needed, Chapter 9.

Grades
There will be a 250-word reaction paper each week. Each paper will count 7 points. The grade will depend solely on the grades on these papers.

Attendance
Regular attendance is required. Unexcused absences will negatively affect a student’s grade.