General information

Course type AMUPIE
Module title Cultural Studies
Language English
Module lecturer dr hab. prof. UAM Marianna Michałowska
Lecturer's email mariamne@amu.edu.pl
Lecturer position
Faculty Faculty of Anthropology and Cultural Studies
Semester 2025/2026 (summer)
Duration 30
ECTS 4
USOS code 20KENS.22K.04434.24

Timetable

Wednesdays, 9-45-11.30,

Campus Ogrody, building AB, room 11/12,

Lecture starts on March the 3rd.

Module aim (aims)

1. Familiarizing students with knowledge in the field of contemporary art and current interdisciplinary discourses focused on such issues as representation of a human body, gender, ethnicity and memory.

2. Presentation of the method of “close reading” of particular artworks that lets to reveal social and cultural meanings of art. The theoretical concepts are accompanied with projections of examples of artistic practice.

3. Presentation of main features of contemporary audiovisual arts: photography, film video and installations in terms of interdisciplinary cultural theories.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Basic knowledge about contemporary art.

Syllabus

  1. Visual arts and visual culture in the humanistic discourse.
  2. Zofia Kulik - Image in a discourse of power and the subject
  3. Shirin Neshat vs. Jenny Holzer – feminisms and cultures 
  4. Richard Prince – masculinity against popular culture
  5. Bodies and bacterias. Post-humanistic turn in visual art
  6. Eija-Liisa Ahtila – art as an everyday experience
  7. Thomas Struth – science in art Angelika Markul and Kelly Jazvac  – art in the anthropocene
  8. Christian Boltanski – a work of memory at the threshold of individual and collective experience
  9. Krzysztof Wodiczko – subconscious of a public space
  10. Hubertus Siegert – a city as a palimpsest
  11. Banksy and Peter Fuss – art on the street
  12. Bill Viola – new media metaphysics
  13. Conclusion – what do pictures want?
  14. The art of talking - students' presentations

Reading list

Obligatory

  1. William J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 2005
  2. Photography: A Critical Introduction, ed. Liz Wells, Routledge 2004.
  3. Representation: cultural representation and signifying practices, ed. S.Hall, Sage Publications 1997.

Optional

  1. Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames, Harvard Univ. Press 2002.
  2. Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts. Urban Palimpsests an the Politics of Memory, Stanford University Press, Stanford California, 2003
  3. T. J. Demos, Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology. An Introduction, In: Contemporary Art and Politics of Ecology, ed. TJ Demos, Third Text. 2013, Issue 1, No 120: 1-9
  4. Þora Pétursdóttir, Climate change? Archaeology and Anthropocene. Archaeological Dialogues 2017, 2(24). 175-205. doi.org/10.1017/S1380203817000216.
  5. James E. Young, At Memory’s Edge. After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture, Yale University Press, 2000
  6. Gillian Whiteley, Situating Junk: art, garbage and trash ontologies. In: Design, Waste & Dignity, ed. MC Loschiavo dos Santos, Săo Paulo: Editora Olhares; 2014: 131-144.