Università Roma Tre

The course deals with the analysis of images. It refers specifically to the social factors intervening in the construction of their meanings. The first part of the course will provide analytical and methodological tolls to the students in order to analyse the images and, more specifically, the photos (referring above all to the theories of Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag). The second part of the course will focus on the social and public use of images, especially in relation to photos of controversial pasts (wars, natural disasters, violence, terroristic attacks). The course will be divided into five teaching modules: (1) What is photography? Theories and methods; (2) The “stories” of photography, the photographs of history; (3) Gender and race in advertising image ; (4) Photography and memory from analog to digital; (5) Visual communication and violence. The course will have an interactive structure, in which students will be asked to actively participate through short presentations, the sharing of images, and the collective interpretation of the visual materials presented by the teacher.

The exam will be based on the reading of the following texts:
1) Roland Barthes (1979), La camera chiara. Nota sulla fotografia, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, Torino.
2) Roland Barthes (1964), Image-Music-Text. (Translation 1977), capitolo II, “The Rhetoric of the Image”. S. Heath, ed. London: Fontana, pp. 32-51.
3) Susan Sontag (1973), On Photography, Capitolo I, "In Plato's Cave”, Rosetta Books, New York, pp. 1-19.
4) David Bate (2017), Il primo libro di fotografia, Capitolo 7 "Fotografia e Arte", Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi,Torino, pp. 193-211.
5) Barbie Zelizer (2004), “The Voice of the Visual in Memory”, in Phillips R. Kendall (ed.), Framing Public Memory, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp. 157-186.
6) Anna Lisa Tota (2013), “A Photo that Matter: The Memorial Clock in Bologna and its Invented Tradition”, in Olga Shevchenko (ed.), Double Exposure: Memory and Photography, Transaction Publishers, Piscaway, pp. 41-64.
7) Susie Linfield (2013), La luce crudele. Fotografia e violenza politica, Contrasto Edizioni, Roma, pp. 10-46.
8) Merskin, Debra (2004), “Reviving Lolita? A Media Literacy Examination of Sexual Portrayals of Girls in Fashion Advertising”. American Behavioral Scientist 48, pp. 119-128.

Students will also have access the teaching materials used by the teacher (power points and images) and a series of suggested readings, whose reading is optional.

All materials are available on the website http://filosofiacomunicazionespettacolo.uniroma3.it on the teacher's personal page.