ARTH 400 Advanced Seminar in Art Historical Methods: Canadian Photography through the Mirror of Memory
- Thursdays, 11:45am-2:15pm
- Remote Delivery
- Instructor: Dr. Martha Langford
The connection between photography and memory is almost automatic. Should it be? Has photography become a substitute for memory? How do family albums organize and activate memory? Looking at a photographic work of art, what portions of meaning should we assign to memory, to history, or to imagination? Is the expression of memory visible in a photographic work of art, and if so, what signs and devices should we look for? These are the basic questions that will be addressed in this seminar. Through lectures, readings, visual analysis, and lots of discussion, we will bear down on this relationship, basing our investigation on different systems of analysis, including phenomenology, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, sociology, ethnography, criminology, ethics, and historiography.
Our case studies will be Canadian, drawing on photographic albums held by the McCord Museum, and on Canadian photographic works of art. This course can therefore be counted toward "Group C" (Canadian Art) degree requirements for students in the Art History Major; however, students will need to submit a signed Course Substitution Request form to Student Academic Services (please contact Prof. S. Stowell for more details).
Students will be guided through the process of writing a research paper that springs from a research question and answers it with a useful theoretical framework and a well-chosen case study. In-class presentations, group discussions, and final papers will demonstrate knowledge and insight into Canadian photographic memory work.
Readings will be drawn from two books and their bibliographies, all available as ebooks or online journal articles:
Martha Langford, Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums, 2001/2020.
Langford, Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art, 2007.
Both books are available as ebooks through the library.