CMCL-C 401: Senior Seminar in Communication and Culture
(Topic: Words and Images in Politics and Culture)
Class Number: 15336

TuTh, 2:30 PM-3:45 PM, Location: TBA


Instructor: Jon Simons			
		
Much scholarship about democracy argues that its political discourse
is sustained by the reasonableness of public, verbal argument and
debate, known as deliberation. Frequently, deliberation is thought
to be undermined by visual (or audio-visual and multi-media) forms
of political discourse. The course assesses the strength of these
arguments by reframing in them in terms of an ongoing ideological
contest between words and images in Western culture. We ask what is
at stake in the contemporary dispute between words and images, in
respect to assertions that we live in a predominantly visual
culture. What sorts of cultural, social and political distinctions
are performed and enacted in the preferences for verbal or (audio)
visual modes of discourse? We also explore the extent to which
(audio)visual cultural forms such as film can stimulate public,
political debate and can contribute as much (or even more) to
critical political thinking in the democratic sphere as traditional,
verbalized discourse. Student’s work for this class will focus on
specific examples of verbal and multi-media modes of both
deliberately political address and other events or artefacts of
popular culture that play a role in political discourse.