Faculty Name

Matthew Sumera

Document Type

Syllabi

School

CLA

Department

ANTH

Course Subject

ANTH

Course Number

3980

Course Section

01

Course Title

Topics: Aesthetics, War, Suffr

Academic Term and Year

Fall 2015

Credits

4.00

Area of Study

ANTH

Course Description

Goals: This course will help students think about the relationships between aesthetics, war, and suffering in both historical and contemporary contexts. Pursuing a broadly cross-cultural approach, the course provides students with a theoretical framework for understanding how and it what ways war and its multiple violences are portrayed by a variety of political and social actors. Class participants will learn how to critically engage with such depictions, focusing on their formal structures as well as where and how they are distributed. In so doing, students will better understand the affective force of war representations while also grappling with productive, ethical ways to respond to them. Content: The course is taught using a mixture of theoretical readings, ethnographies, literature, film, music, war reporting, and artworks. Topics covered include: a basic introduction to aesthetic theory; an exploration of the connections between visual and auditory cultures and the politics of representation; cultural policy and the politics of performing arts; and case studies from WWII, the Vietnam War, and the US-led "War on Terror."

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