Final Examination: Three Image Visual Analysis and Essay on Louisiana (or another region of your choice). Complete each part:
1. Final Exam (due Finals Week, TBA):
Question: What is special about Louisiana (or elsewhere)? What celebrates of troubles this “place”? How do we see this in artistic or persuasive images? Write a 4-5 page essay that answers this prompt!
First, review the essays from Module One (Performing and Seeing) through Module Five (Governing and Authorizing). Using theories introduced throughout the course, select a set of 3 images of the state of Louisiana, and explore symbolic actions to create, analyze, artistically evaluate and defend the “story” you author about this “place”, our special state, or elsewhere (4-5 pages). Explain how the authors you have read shape the way we understand vision as a form of performance, memory, resistance,, consumption or control, for example, via the images you select. Explain whether or not you agree with the conclusions of the authors. Make sure to include citations from the essays in your answer. Your text can represent any aspect of visual imagery and you are encouraged to be creative and engaged. You may also use other sources whether from newspapers, magazines or other visual theorists to explain your curated vision of place, just be sure to provide proper citations for all reference materials (MLA style sheet, please). Here are some examples of Louisiana-based artists and scenes. You might choose to explore some of this content as material for your final essays, or choose images/artists that better suit your interests. Feel free to use material from whatever region, state, or neighborhood is meaningful to you, if Louisiana is not a good fit for your interests.
Julie Dermansky:
https://www.jsdart.com/index
George Rodrique:
https://georgerodrigue.com/bio/
Vintage Mardi Gras:
http://www.fox8live.com/story/28094261/mardi-gras-70-vintage-photos-of-americas-most-famous-party
Brandon Odums:
TEXT:
Lester Olson, Cara Finnegan and Diane Hope. Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture. New York: Sage, 2008.
PLEASE REFER TO THE ARTICLES NOTED BELOW THAT CAN BE FOUND THE TEXT MENTIONED ABOVE
Module One
Read Articles 1-4
Sect. I. Performing and Seeing
1. The Performative Dimension of Surveillance: Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives / Reginald Twigg
2. Embodying Normal Miracles / Nathan Stormer
3. Recognizing Lincoln: Image Vernaculars in Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture / Cara A. Finnegan
4. “What Lips These Lips Have Kissed”: Refiguring the Politics of Queer Public Kissing / Charles E. Morris III and John M. Sloo
Sect. II. Remembering and Memorializing
5. The Rhetoric of the Frame: Revisioning Archival Photographs in The Civil War / Judith Lancioni
6. Representative Form and the Visual Ideograph: The Iwo Jima Image in Editorial Cartoons / Janis L. Edwards and Carol K. Winkler
7. Reproducing Civil Rights Tactics: The Rhetorical Performances of the Civil Rights Memorial / Carole Blair and Neil Michel
8. Remembering World War II: The Rhetoric and Politics of National Commemoration at the Turn of the 21st Century / Barbara A. Biesecker
9. Public Identity and Collective Memory in U.S. Iconic Photography: The Image of “Accidental Napalm” / Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites
Module Three
Confrontation and Resistance
Read Articles 10-13
Sect. III. Confronting and Resisting
10. The Precarious Visibility Politics of Self-Stigmatization: The Case of HIV/ AIDS Tattoos / Dan Brouwer
11. Encountering Visions of Aztlan: Arguments for Ethnic Pride, Community Activism, and Cultural Revitalization in Chicano Murals / Margaret R. LaWare
12. The Guerrilla Girls’ Comic Politics of Subversion / Anne Teresa Demo
13. Behold the Corpse: Violent Images and the Case of Emmett Till / Christine Harold and Kevin Michael DeLuca
Module Four
Sect. IV. Commodifying and Consuming
14. The Force of Callas’ Kiss: The 1997 Apple Advertising Campaign, “Think Different” / Ronald E. Shields
15. “Put Your Stamp on History”: The USPS Commemorative Program Celebrate the Century and Postmodern Collective Memory / Ekaterina V. Haskins
16. Memorializing Affluence in the Postwar Family: Kodak’s Colorama in Grand Central Terminal (1950-1990) / Diane S. Hope
Module Five
Sect. V. Governing and Authorizing
17. Benjamin Franklin’s Pictorial Representations of the British Colonies in America: A Study in Rhetorical Iconology / Lester C. Olson
18. Presidential Rhetoric’s Visual Turn: Performance Fragments and the Politics of Illusionism / Keith V. Erickson
19. Mediating Hillary Rodham Clinton: Television News Practices and Image-Making in the Postmodem Age / Shawn J. Parry-Giles
20. “To Veil the Threat of Terror”: Afghan Women and the in the Imagery of the U.S. War on Terrorism / Dana L. Cloud
Afterword: Look, Rhetoric! / Thomas W. Benson
