HUM3003 - Image: Introduction to the Humanities

Objectives:

On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
distinguish diverse types of image - icon; painting; photograph; film; branding; selfie - and understand their social functions;
demonstrate an understanding of diverse attitudes to images;
develop a considered attitude to image culture;
apply basic theoretical approaches and methodologies in the analysis, or production, of images;
conduct scholarly research and communicate results both accurately and clearly.

Content:

Across history images have been treated as a source of knowledge and power, and they have been loved, trusted, feared, and hated accordingly. This module explores a range of historical attitudes toward images and the social power they embody: from religious icons, to celebrity glamour; from high-status artworks to selfies; and from images as a source of authoritative knowledge to images that have purely personal associations. An understanding of what humans have done and can do with images will provide the keys to various methods of analysing images that are central to modern humanities subjects.

Learning and Teaching Information:

The module positions students as producers, analysers and critics of images, in addition to being consumers of them in everyday life. Workshops and seminars mix many image-making activities and discussion sections, along with short lectures and discussions of readings in the sections. The main focus for assessment is a project to produce an image that reflects critically on image culture (such as a short film, a 3D object, a collage, an image/text) which can be undertaken in a group or individually.

Workshops/seminars
Contact Hours: 50
Intended Group Size: 20

Guided independent study
Hours: 250

Further details relating to assessment
Report: the report will present contrasting responses to an image, selected by the student. The aim is to demonstrate understanding diversity in the social power and functions attributed to images. The report must also demonstrate engagement with the given readings from academic texts, in both the acquisition of knowledge about the diverse attitudes to images and also in the selection and accurate application of a methodology for analysing images.

Project Presentation: Forms that the project could take include (but are not limited to) a photo-essay; a graphic image; a painting; a set of Web pages; a short film (which you could post on YouTube); a cartoon; a sculpture; a collage; a dramatic presentation; a T-shirt with your own design; a verbal image (such as a poem or any piece of writing that relies heavily on verbal images - Plato's simile of the cave is a good example). You may mix words and visual images. The project must be presentable in class, requiring no more than 10 minutes for presentation. The project idea and the presentation skills are the basis for the mark, not the quality of the constructed image or the recording quality.

Assessment:

Fact File

Module Coordinator - Hatana El-jarn
Level - 0
Credit Value - 30
Pre-Requisites - NONE
Semester(s) Offered - 3YL

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