Faces and Powers

4 credits

Examines the social and political effects of represented faces in classical, medieval, Renaissance, modern, and some non-Western contexts. We will look at the face of God, facial grotesques, pseudosciences such as physiognomy, and faces in anthropology, criminology, eugenics, and insanity. Discusses the distortion and erasure of the face in avant-garde art from 1850 to 1950; the celluloid face; and renegotiations with the face in phenomenological/existential thinking and recent identity politics. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.