220084 Images and War (S) (SoSe 2014)

The seminar explores the visual communication and memory of modern wars during the 20th century. We will investigate how different types of visual media (paintings, cartoons, photography, film, monuments) reported, depicted, interpreted and aestheticized wars, how they were used to (de-)legitimize mobilization, enmity, killing and death, and how they intervened in and remembered wars. The seminar will address methodological questions such as documentary and discursive qualities of images, it will ask about the visual representation of experiences and emotions, and it seeks to approach the shifting historico-political contours of the visibility and invisibility of violence.

Part of the seminar will be held as a block seminar by guest professor Prof. Julia Adeney Thomas from the University of Notre Dame, USA. During the sessions we will focus on photography as evidence and political interpretation, humanitarian photography, and empire and memory through Japanese museums.

Sessions on Tuesdays, 16-18h:
15.04.2014 (Introduction)
13.05.2014
20.05.2014
03.06.2014
10.06.2014
17.06.2014
24.06.2014
Block seminars on Saturday, June 28, and Saturday, July 5 (9-12 & 13-16h)
08.07.2014 (Concluding session)

Bibliography

Preparatory Reading:
Julia Adeney Thomas, The Evidence of Sight, in: History and Theory, Theme Issue: Photography and Historical Interpretation, 48 (December 2009), 151-168; Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing. The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence, Ithaca, NY 2001; Gerhard Paul, Bilder des Krieges, Krieg der Bilder. Die Visualisierung des modernen Krieges, Paderborn u.a. 2004; Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, London 2004.