PSCI 337
Visual Politics Spring 2026
Division II
Cross-listed AMST 370 / ARTH 337

Even casual observers know that appearances matter politically and that the saturation of politics by visual technologies, media, and images has reached unprecedented levels. Yet the visual dimensions of political life are at best peripheral topics in contemporary political science and political theory. This seminar explores how our understanding of politics and political theory might change if visuality were made central to our inquiries. Treating the visual as a site of power and struggle, order and change, we will examine not only how political institutions and conflicts shape what images people see and how they make sense of them but also how the political field itself is visually constructed. We will consider a wide variety of visual artifacts and practices, including, for example, ancient practices of burying images, 17th century paintings, gazes and glances in everyday life, the history of modern surveillance, iconoclasm, lynching photography, and machine-machine exchanges of “operational” images within algorithmic systems. Through these inquiries, we weill also take up fundamental questions about the place of the senses in political life. Readings may include excerpts from ancient and modern theorists, but our primary focus will be contemporary and will bring political theory into conversation with other fields, particularly art history and visual studies but also fmedia studies, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, STS, and the writings of practicing artists. Possible authors include Belting, Benjamin, Bousquet, Browne, Buck-Morss, Butler, Campt, Clark, Crary, Debord, Deleuze, Fanon, Foucault, Freedberg, Hobbes, Kittler, Mercer, Mitchell, Mulvey, Paglen, Parikka, Plato, Rancière, Scott, Steyerl, and Virilio