Freshman Seminar 62m

Can Art Inspire Social Justice?Sarah Lewis
Tuesday 12-2:45pm
How do images—photographs, films, and videos—create narratives that shape our definition of national belonging? Social media has changed how we ingest images. Protests, social injustice, and collective moments of triumph are all played out in photos and videos in real time unlike anything we thought possible just a few decades ago. What skills of visual literacy and critical consciousness are required to understand of the opportunities and challenges that technology is presenting to civic life? The seminar will explore the connection between images and justice in America, focusing on case studies that deal with historic and contemporary topics from emancipation, indigenous conflict, desegregation, Japanese internment, borderland conflicts, the long Civil Rights movement, and more. It will wrestle with the question of how the foundational right to representation in a democracy, the right to be recognized justly, is indelibly tied to the work of images in the public realm. What constitutes a figurative emblem of protest? What does effective resistance look like in art and in the digital realm? By the end of the course, students should be able to consider how images have had persuasive efficacy in the context of social and racial justice movements, critically engage with and contextualize the narratives surrounding images posted online, and understand how democratic rights are connected to visual representation in the United States.