Reading Pictures: Illustration History

3 units

This course will explore illustration as a cultural practice interwoven with writing, printing, publishing, and design in North America, Europe, and East Asia from the early modern period with emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics will include vernacular languages and the rise of reading, verbal and pictorial competition and complementarity, industrial image production and associated labor systems, the interdependence of illustration and photography, and illustration as a participant in the histories of race and gender as well as a marker of cultural memory. Course work includes lectures, discussions, and hands on work with Rare Books and DIRA materials in the department of Special Collections.