ARTH 222
Photography in/of the Middle East Fall 2013
Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed ARAB 222
This is not the current course catalog

Since its inception, photography has been globally disseminated but locally inflected, serving disparate documentary needs and expressive purposes in different cultural contexts. In the Middle East, the powers and pleasures of the medium have been valued by colonial forces, indigenous populations, photojournalists and artists; the resulting images merit aesthetic appreciation even as they grant visual access to the past and present in complicated places. The course will explore photographic practices in different zones of the Middle East–e.g., the Holy Land, Egypt or the Persian sphere–by attending to individual photographers and case studies. This tightly focused approach will support, in turn, a consideration of the burdens and risks of representation in particular circumstances–what work do photographs do? Who resists and who benefits? The general goal will be to appreciate the diversity of perspectives that underlie renderings of the Middle East.