ARTH 470
Image-making, Orientalism and Visual Culture Spring 2014
Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
This is not the current course catalog

Images enjoy extraordinary power in the spaces between self and other, human and divine. They play myriad roles-witness, surrogate, instigator, supplicant–and travel freely across political, religious and cultural boundaries. This course is about three regions-United States, France and the Persian sphere–and the images that mediate and document their interactions. Along the way, we will address important issues like iconoclasm and aniconism, common types like veiled women and pious men, and asymmetrical relationships like Orientalism. The peculiar nature of portraiture will be a prominent theme. This course fulfills the Exploring Diversity Initiative in its emphasis on comparative cultures and its effort to promote understanding of contextualized meanings in diverse settings.