Course Description

“Seeing comes before words.  The child looks and recognises before it can speak… There is no innocent way of seeing.”
John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Contemporary images of science are haunted by a curious paradox. On the one hand, from the CSI franchise, NUMB3RS, Avataar and a host of other media products we are inundated with images of science.  These images make visible the precise mechanism of crimes and the criminal mind.  Computer-generated images of the brain, the wounded body, and the scene of the crime are persuasive and compelling; by repeatedly redrawing the boundaries between the visible and the invisible these media formations they have helped produce what cultural critics have termed the CSI effect – reel life shaping “real” life.  On the other hand, the proliferation of these popular images of science arises even as technologies of digital reproduction have become democratized.  We are now increasingly familiar with the ways in which images are manipulated to produce particular truths.  This course is propelled by understanding the terms underpinning this cultural formation: how do images of science gain authority even as we as a culture are increasingly aware of the constructed nature of images. The readings, film screenings, and various assignments are designed to help us understand the complicated relationship between science and the images through which scientific claims are established. We will explore the historical link between imaging practices and our perceptions of the real/ truth.  We will analyze the specific strategies through which scientific truth, objectivity, and empiricism are signaled through images across different media. Some questions animating the course are: How do images convey truth? How is the human body represented in science, medical culture and popular culture? How are race, gender, sexual difference and the animal-human divide depicted in science?

The course is interdisciplinary in its theoretical approach and its object of study.  We will examine the representational practices across diverse disciplines.  The course is designed to cultivate a critical approach to our understanding of images of science and how scientific knowledge is produce; it is not designed to make us skeptical or cynical readers.  We will draw from the vast scholarship in the history of science, philosophy of science, visual culture studies, cultural studies, feminist studies and critical race theories to understand the workings of science and the social nature of the construction of scientific knowledge.

The course materials are divided into broad sections: defining the field of science studies; visual histories of science; science and gender/sexual difference; science and the naturalization of racial difference; visions of the future.

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