Lecture (LEC)

• This section meets with section CMLT-C 400 and CULS-C 701

Coming into Visibility: Recognition, Abstraction, Opacity. What happens when something becomes visible? What do we gain and what do we lose? How are the terms and experiences of clarity and legibility related to the sensorial event of visibility? These questions will guide our exploration in this course, where we will move across philosophy, psychoanalysis, art criticism, black studies, indigenous studies, literature, and film/video to think about strategies of presenting or hiding something from the senses, and more specifically, from view. The class dynamics will combine lectures, discussion, and student presentations. The major assignments are: a weekly class journal, presentation of a text, and a final research paper or creative project + reflection. Among the authors we will study are: Frantz Fanon, Davi Kopenawa, Andrea Soto Calderón, John Berger, Hito Steyerl, Georges Didi-Huberman, Saidiya Hartman, Roberto Bolaño, Harun Farocki, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Albertina Carri, and others.