SHUM 4684 - The Labor of Images: Encountering the Collective in Visual Cultures

(crosslisted) ARTH 4684, COML 4684, ENGL 4984, PMA 4684, VISST 4684
(ALC-AS, LA-AS)

Fall. 3 credits. Student option grading.

Co-meets with ARTH 6684/COML 6684/PMA 6684/SHUM 6684/VISST 6684.

S. Wells.

This interdisciplinary seminar brings together critical theory and global visual arts to analyze the problem of work over the long twentieth century. By focusing on the labor of visual artists and their encounters with collective work, we will tackle how our understanding of work has transformed over the last century, including new definitions of immaterial and affective labor; the challenges and pleasures of political friendships across class, race, gender, and national lines; the labor of the spectator or viewer, operational images and the optical unconscious; and anti-work imaginaries and possible futures of collective life. Throughout, we will consider how medium, coordination, and form cut across both theories of labor and the praxis of visual art.