Universität Wien

240531 SE MM3 Politics of (In)visibility (2024S)

Prüfungsimmanente Lehrveranstaltung

Participation at first session is obligatory!

The lecturer can invite students to a grade-relevant discussion about partial achievements. Partial achievements that are obtained by fraud or plagiarized result in the non-evaluation of the course (entry 'X' in certificate). The plagiarism software 'Turnitin' will be used.
The use of AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT) for the attainment of partial achievements is only allowed if explicitly requested by the course instructor.

An/Abmeldung

Hinweis: Ihr Anmeldezeitpunkt innerhalb der Frist hat keine Auswirkungen auf die Platzvergabe (kein "first come, first served").

Details

max. 25 Teilnehmer*innen
Sprache: Englisch

Lehrende

Termine (iCal) - nächster Termin ist mit N markiert

UPDATE 06.05.2024: changed dates
Individual feedback sessions in room B0420 on May 29th, June 5th, 11th and 12th.

The film screening will take place in the last week of June, not at the regular class hours. The time will be announced later but we aim for Tuesday 25 June from 17.00 to 21.00 o'clock.

  • Mittwoch 06.03. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal C, NIG 4. Stock
  • Mittwoch 20.03. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal C, NIG 4. Stock
  • Mittwoch 10.04. 13:15 - 14:45 Übungsraum (A414) NIG 4. Stock
  • Mittwoch 17.04. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal C, NIG 4. Stock
  • Mittwoch 24.04. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal C, NIG 4. Stock
  • Mittwoch 08.05. 11:30 - 14:45 Übungsraum (A414) NIG 4. Stock
  • Mittwoch 15.05. 11:30 - 14:45 Übungsraum (A414) NIG 4. Stock
  • Mittwoch 22.05. 11:30 - 14:45 Übungsraum (A414) NIG 4. Stock
  • Mittwoch 29.05. 09:00 - 16:45 Ort in u:find Details
  • Mittwoch 05.06. 09:00 - 16:45 Ort in u:find Details
  • Dienstag 11.06. 15:00 - 17:00 Ort in u:find Details
  • Mittwoch 12.06. 14:00 - 16:30 Ort in u:find Details

Information

Ziele, Inhalte und Methode der Lehrveranstaltung

What can be seen and shown? By whom? Why? And what happens when these norms are breached? These questions are hard to ask because aesthetic norms so often appear self-evident, but they can be asked by anthropologists. In this course, we will study practices of seeing, showing, erasing, and concealing in the realm of the state, the media, and in the everyday life of people. The course encounters questions about (in)visibility from different theoretical angles, through readings of literature from anthropology, sociology, arts and media studies, and philosophy. In the end students reflect on the potential role of anthropologists in these politics of (in)visibility and put theory into practice in a visual laboratory.

Learning goals
After completing this course,
-Students have gained theoretical knowledge about concepts such as visibility, invisibility, aesthetics, and discourse, and have read ethnographic articles that employ these concepts in concrete settings.
-Students have gained methodological knowledge about how patterns of (in)visibility can be analysed in a set of existing images.
-Students can translate concepts into images and vice versa, can work with analogue and digital techniques of montage to demonstrate or construct theory.

Course set-up
The course has two parts. The first part consists of reading seminars. Students prepare classes by reading literature and writing mid-term papers. In the second part of the course, students work on a visual research project with a multimodal outcome. They collect images from existing sources (such as newspapers, films, or social media), analyse them to look out for patterns of (in)visibility, gain experience with techniques of montage, and work on a re-montage of the found images to produce an aesthetic intervention. The resulting montage film is exhibited.

Art der Leistungskontrolle und erlaubte Hilfsmittel

The highest possible score to achieve is 100.
50 points: Average of two mid-term papers to show mastery of course literature.
10 points: A visual analysis of a collection of existing images, resulting in a film plan
40 points: Short film: individual contribution to the final outcome during the exhibition, including one’s contribution to collaborative work during the creation process.

To pass the course, a minimum of 61 points is required.
91-100 = 1, excellent
81-90 = 2, good
71-80 = 3, satisfactory
61-70 = 4, sufficient
00-60 = 5, failed

Mindestanforderungen und Beurteilungsmaßstab

Written contributions will be evaluated with the following criteria:
-knowledge of compulsory course literature: accurate representation and understanding of key arguments in this literature.
-image application: evidence of original visual research into a key theme in the literature, ability to translate a key idea from the literature into image(s), clarity of link between image and literature as shown in verbal explanations.
-academic argument: focus, structure, clarity of reasoning
-formal requirements, especially citation: use the IKSA Writing Guidelines, also formatting and correct English language.

The short film and film proposal will be evaluated along the following criteria:
-clarity of the conceptual link with the compulsory course literature: selection of a concept from the literature, correct understanding of this concept, application and appropriation of the concept;
-visual analysis: evidence of ability to conduct research into a subset of existing images;
-montage: an original intervention in this body of images to articulate an independent argument;
-aesthetics: choice of form that suits the concept, skill in implementing it, creativity and originality;
-contributions to both collaborative and individual work during the creation process;
-formal requirements: in the film, just as in the papers, all sources should be properly referenced.

Participation is required.

Prüfungsstoff

This class is directed at MA students of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the CREOLE Master.

The mid-term papers have a conventional form (according to the IKSA guidelines). They require a deep reading of the compulsory literature as well as correct explanations of examples and concepts described in the texts.

For the film, no specific technical skills are required but a willingness to learn about video editing is a must. Students with previous editing experience will learn how to employ their skills in a social scientific context.

Literatur

Students are expected to study literature and some media examples. Students are expected to study these in advance of the classes to engage in productive discussions.

Visibility
-Andrea Brighenti. 2007. Visibility: a category for the social sciences. Current Sociology 55 (3), 323-342.
-Annemarie Samuels. 2021. Strategies of silence in an age of transparency: Navigating HIV and visibility in Aceh, Indonesia. History and anthropology 32 (4), 498-515.
-Hosna J., Shewly, Lorraine Nencel, Ellen Bal, and Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff. 2020. Invisible mobilities: stigma, immobilities, and female sex workers’ mundane socio-legal negotiations of Dhakas urban space. Mobilities 15 (4), 500-513.
-Gili Hammer. 2016. “If they’re going to stare, at least I’ll give them a good reason to”: Blind women’s visibility, invisibility, and encounters with the Gaze. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 41 (2), 409-432.

Aesthetics
-Terry Eagleton. 1988. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Poetics Today 9 (2), 327-338.
-Alexei Yurchark. 2008. Necro-Utopia: The Politics of Indistinction and the Aesthetics of the Non-Soviet. Current Anthropology 49 (2).

Visual analysis
-Gillian Rose. 2023 (fifth edition). Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. London: Sage. Chapter "Discourse Analysis I".

Montage
-Sanderien Verstappen. 2021. “Hidden behind toilet rolls: visual landscapes of COVID-19.” FocaalBlog, 15 January. Accessible on http://www.focaalblog.com/2021/01/14/sanderien-verstappen-hidden-behind-toilet-rolls-visual-landscapes-of-covid-19/.
-Student films from the course “Politics of (In)visibility”, 2020 and 2022. Information about the exhibition on https://vval.univie.ac.at/projects/exhibition-the-politics-of-invisibility/, direct access to the films on https://vimeo.com/showcase/7305155.

Zuordnung im Vorlesungsverzeichnis

Letzte Änderung: Mo 06.05.2024 10:46