Open to first-year and transfer students only – click here to learn more about Duke’s first-year seminars program
This seminar introduces to the students various aspects of visual culture. Beginning with a series of workshops on image filmmaking and sound making, the course treats audiovisualities and their production as the core of its inquiry. What is the relationship between aurality and visuality? How is a combined study of audiovisuality different from mere discrete sensory facilities of seeing and hearing? This seminar poses crucial questions about audiovisual culture from media such as film and photograph, to news and advertisement, from history to memory, from filmed operas to Lady Gaga’s music videos, and from art museums to shopping malls. The “truth” claim of vision—“seeing is believing”—is at once affirmed and challenged; crucially, the underexplored aspects of the audio provide new terrain of inquiry. Hands-on participation is emphasized, from museum tours to workshops, from in-class activities to group presentations: students’ active engagement in image making and sound making.