Course Syllabus

Academic Writing and Critical Reading (section 13): Reading Photographs

Since Niécephore Niépce looked out his window at Le Gras and took the first photograph in 1826, the medium has challenged the way we see and how we think about what is real, what is mechanical, what is art, what is reflection, and what is abstraction. What is it about the photograph’s ability to record a moment—something the critic Roland Barthes describes as catastrophic—that evokes art, science, nostalgia, and the promise of truth? In this course we’ll reflect on the photograph’s promises of transparency in an age where photoshop is a verb, Kodak no longer makes film, the camera is now a computer, and it is possible to make a photograph without ever entering a dark room.

This section of Academic Writing and Critical Reading focuses on topics in the history of photography. Like all sections of this course, you will write 3 essay of increasing complexity, you will complete preliminary writing and reading exercises to help you generate paper topics and drafts incrementally; and you will be required to write an ungraded draft of each assignment, conference with me to outline a revision plan; and submit a revised essay. The class is divided roughly in thirds to reflect the three-paper structure. 

We will begin the semester by examining a foundational theoretical text in conversation with a close and considering the dynamics that shaped one of the earliest forms of photography, the daguerreotype, in the nineteenth-century.  The second essay will consider documentary photography in the 1930s and the Farm Security Administration with special attention to the photography of Dorothea Lange. The last essay of the class will ask you to reflect on and analyze the way digital photography and culture has affected photojournalism.  Along the way we will address key elements of the academic essay: gaining critical reading skills to support your studies long after this course is over; generating a problem and an arguable claim; structuring an essay; and using sources.

Key dates (subject to change)

Essay 1: January 27-February 21

Due date for final draft of essay 1: approximately the last week of February depending on conference schedules

Essay 2: March 2-April 3

Due date for final draft of essay 2: approximately the first week of April, depending on conference schedules

Essay 3: April 13-May 4

Due date for final draft of essay 3: last class of the semester, week of May 14.

Theattached document outlines course policies, required reading, and additional details about how the course will run.