Reading List
There is no required text for this course. All readings are available as pdfs on the Morris Library e-reserve system. Based on our class discussions, critiques, and your developing interests, I may recommend or require other readings as the semester progresses.
Barthes, Roland. “Myth Today.” Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), pp. 109-142.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), pp 45-64.
Berman, Marshall. “Introduction” and “Marx, Modernism, and Modernization.” All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), pp. 15-36 and 87-129.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Author as Producer.” Reflections. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), pp. 220-238.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. (New York: Schoken Books, 1968), pp. 217-251.
Debord, Guy. “The Commodity as Spectacle” and “Negation and Consumption in the Cultural Sphere.” Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. (New York: Zone Books, 1994), pp. 25-34 and 129-147.
Demos, T.J. “Desire in Diaspora: Emily Jacir.” Art Journal. Vol. 62 No. 4 (Winter 2003), pp. 68-78.
Fraser, Nancy and Linda Nicholson. “Social Criticism without Philosophy: An encounter between feminism and postmodernism” in Postmodernity, A Reader. Edited by Thomas Docherty. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 415-432.
Harvey, David. “Modernity and Modernism” and “Postmodernism.” The Condition of Postmodernity. (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 10-65.
hooks, bell. “Is Paris Burning?” Black Looks: Race and Representation. (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992), pp. 145-156.
Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment a Mass Deception.” Dialectic of Enlightenment. (New York: Continuum Books, 1996), pp. 120-167.
Jameson, Frederic. “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” in Postmodernity, A Reader. Edited by Thomas Docherty. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 62-97.
Kaprow, Allan. “The Education of the Un-Artist, Part 1” and “The Education of the Un-Artist, Part 2.” Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. Ed. Jeff Kelley. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 97-126.
Kipnis, Laura. “Repossessing Popular Culture.” Ecstasy Unlimited: On Sex, Capital, Gender, and Aesthetics. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 13-32.
Kuoni, Carin, ed. Energy Plan for the Western Man: Writings by and Interviews with the Artist. (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990).
Marcus, Greil. “The Art of Yesterday’s Crash” and “Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette).” Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 187-244 and 345-429.
Michaud, Eric. “The Ends of Art According to Beuys.” Trans. Rosalind Krauss. October. Vol 45 (Summer 1988), pp. 36-46.
Oguibe, Olu. “In the ‘Heart of Darkness’” in Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985. Edited by Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 226-232.
Paglen, Trevor. “Groom Lake and the Imperial Production of Nowhere” in Spaces of Terror. Edited by Derek Gregory and Allan Pred. (London: Routledge, forthcoming).
Pilar, Praba. “Los Hexterminators, Super Eroes Super Cabrones” in Are All the Women Still White? Globalizing Women's Studies. Edited by Ime Kerlee and Janell Hobson. (forthcoming).
Rose, Gillian. “Semiology.” Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. (London: SAGE Publications, 2001), pp. 69-99.
Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright. “Postmodernism and Popular Culture.” Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp 237-277.
Tagg, John. “A Means of Surveillance: The Photograph as Evidence in the Law.” The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photography and History. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), pp. 66-102.
Thompson, Nato. “Trespassing Relevance” in The Interventionists: A User’s Guide to the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. Edited by Nato Thomson and Gregory Sholette. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004), pp. 13-22.
Tonkiss, Fran. “Analyzing Discourse,” in Researching Society and Culture. Edited by Clive Seale. (London: Sage Publications, 1998), pp. 245-260.
Wodiczko, Krzysztof. “An Interview by Bruce Robbins.” Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects, Interviews. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999), pp. 194-210.