Visualizing Global Change

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The goal of the course is to compare the processes by which social scientists and filmmakers/photographers engage in social documentation. Students explore how global social problems such as rural and urban poverty, race and gender inequalities, immigration, and violence are analyzed across the social sciences and depicted in a variety of documentary film and photography genres. The course also explores the role that documentary photography and film play in promoting rights and advocating for social change, particularly in the realm of human rights and global inequality. It examines the history of documentary film and photography in relationship to politics and the development of concerns across the social sciences with inequality and social justice. It also looks at how individual documentarians, non-profit organizations, and social movements use film and photography to further their goals and causes as well as issues of representation their choices raise. The course is unique because it requires students to engage in the process of visual documentation themselves by incorporating an activity-based learning component. For their final project, students choose a human rights or social problem that concerns or interests them (and which they can document locally - no travel is required), prepare a documentary exhibit on the chosen topic (10-12 photographs), and write an essay analyzing how social scientists construct and frame the given problem. Students also have the option to produce a short documentary film.