Culture, Power, and Visual Representation

(4 Credits)

This course explores anthropology’s relationship to visuality, focusing on ethnographic film as a mode for representing culture and as a site of cultural practice. We will examine the emergence of and the contestations around ethnographic film and its relationship to wider debates about documentary and non-fictional film practice, while locating its emergence within the history of visuality that defines 20th century modernity. As the title of the course suggests, one of the central themes we will think through is the relationship between representation, power, and knowledge as manifest in cross-cultural filmic projects. Throughout the course we will interrogate ethnographic film as a signifying practice, its status as a form of anthropological knowledge, and discuss the ethical and political concerns it raises.