Week 7 Interpreting the Visual II: Context

Our readings for this week are incredibly eloquent examples of visual rhetoric—our authors explain how photojournalistic icons are powerful commentary on public culture, and are not fixed in meaning but are constantly rearticulated through historical and cultural shifts. How do Harriman & Lucaites structure their arguments? What are the various topic areas they move through in their discussion of the functions of photographs (remember, you only have to read ONE of the Harriman/Lucaites pieces)? How does Finnegan think through historical conceptions of the visual that involves an analysis of production, reproduction and circulation.

The Olson piece is a fabulous literature review that scopes out the entire field of visual rhetoric. It’s a helpful example of a really great literature review (every Ph.D. student has to include a literature review of their topic as one of their chapters of their dissertation). You’ll see that many of our readings are in there, as well as a mention of Cate Palczewski’s important research!). This will be a helpful persusal, and will come in handy as you work on your visual rhetoric paper, which you should be thinking about. Given the wide variety of topics Olson walks us through, what do you think you might focus on for your paper? Any ideas?

Let me just say that you all have been doing fabulous work so far, and I can't believe we're already in Week 7! This is our last "visual rhetoric" class and we're going to sort of shift gears starting in Week 8.