UC Berkeley undergraduates interested in the Visual Cultures Course Thread should contact course-threads@berkeley.edu.
This Course Thread examines the breadth, depth, and complexity of the image’s role in shaping aesthetics, politics, and social culture. A single image can reflect and influence social change, provide historical record, offer opportunities for personal and aesthetic expression, serve as legal and scientific “proof,” and often is used to build and forge identity.
Despite the multiple applications or modes of visibility that this thread brings together, it is structured around the concept and principles of the photographic. It includes not only courses on the practical, theoretical, critical, and aesthetic approaches to image making, but also courses on photography, digital imaging, installation, and film. By considering how images are created, presented, discussed, used and documented, students gain an intimate knowledge of the ways in which images increasingly structure modern society and consciousness.