Visual Culture: Histories of Modern Visuality

The course covers the historical development of central aspects of modern and contemporary visual culture, such as the emergence of the modern city, photography, digital culture, and processes of globalisation. These modern and contemporary forms of visuality are studied with consideration of their continuities and discontinuities with the visual cultures of pre-modern periods.

The course examines modern and contemporary visual culture from three perspectives:

1. The technological and social modernisation of the lifeworld, such as the growth of urbanisation, secularisation, image reproduction technologies, and colonialism.
2. The emergence of new forms of display, exposition and visual milieus, as well as the experiences, sensations and sensibilities that they have fostered.
3. Theoretical and philosophical understandings of modern and contemporary forms of visuality, and their cultural as well as existential implications for the human condition.