FRS 002S - Sec.
001 - (2 units) - CRN 53514 - R 12:10-2:00 PM - 25 Wellman
Picturing
Social Life: Photographs and Film, Facts and
Fabrication
Instructor: Jon Wagner, School of Education
Description: This seminar explores how
photographs, video and
film are used to “picture” social life in social
research, journalism,
entertainment, advertising and propaganda. Discussion topics include: making
and faking visual documents of social life; linking texts and
images to create
or reduce ambiguity; marketing visual “documents” in the digital
age; the science and craft of representing social reality; and
visual rhetorics
of fantasy and fiction.
Format: The seminar meets for two hours each week. Seminars
combine mini-lectures and presentations with in-class discussions
of readings,
photographs, video tape viewing, student presentations and short
writing assignments.
No standard text is required, but students will read a selection of articles
chosen from diverse sources, including: visual anthropology, visual
sociology,
documentary film-making, documentary photography, media studies
and the arts.
Students will review “found” video and film documents
and construct
visual documents of their own (in pairs and teams) by working on four short
assignments:
(A) Creating facts and fabrications (teams): Use still photographs
and/or video
tape create two documents of social life that you find interesting. For one
of these, make a deliberate, concerted effort to “fabricate” or
“fake” the social life you are supposedly
“documenting.”
For the other, make a deliberate, concerted effort to record a
“factual
account.”
(B) Interpreting “reality” in television programming
(teams): Compare
and contrast two examples of mass market television programming -
one that relies
on the proposition that what you are seeing is “fact,”
and one that
relies on the proposition that what you are seeing is
“fabrication.”
What cues, design features, and framing are used to communicate
these propositions/expectations
to targeted audiences? Under what circumstances could these
elements be misread
by people viewing these materials?
(C) Fact and fabrication as complements (pairs): Using both factual
and fabricated
images, put together a set of photographs or a short video tape
that you think
provides a representation of social life that would be hard to produce (for
whatever reason) if you relied exclusively on either
“factual” or
“fabricated” images.
(D) Framing fact and fabrication (individuals): Prepare a 1-2 page statement
that could help audiences distinguish fact from fabrication in a
media production
of your choice — i.e. a television show (or series),
advertising campaign,
documentary or ethnographic film or photo book; fictional film or
photo book;
political or policy document; a single work of photo/video art (or
an exhibition);
or the work of a visual artist. Students will present their work on
these assignments
to the class as teams, pairs or individually. Each student will also write a
brief commentary (500-750 words) comparing assignments presented in
class with
one or more of the course readings. Each student will also prepare
a short written
statement (300-500 words) that tries to distinguish “fact” from
“fabrication” in a media product of their choice and
present that
statement in a mini-conference format at the last class session.
Grading:
Grades will be based on the following: 20% for each of the four assignments
and commentaries; 20% on classroom participation.
About the Instructor: Jon Wagner is a professor in
the School
of Education. His research interests include school organization and reform,
children's material culture, and image-based research. Current
projects include
a study of how children and adults view the material culture of children in
the home and in school and studies of two alternative high schools
that emphasize
“problem-based learning.” Professor Wagner is past President of
the International Visual Sociology Association and the founding Image Editor
of the American Sociological Association's Contexts
magazine.