Undergraduate Course: Photography & History, 1839-2000 (HIST10527)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | We live in a world saturated by images, yet many still regard a photograph as a mere illustration to history rather than an active participant in it. Examining the role that the photograph has played in shaping history since the nineteenth century allows us to understand our own responses to images, and the enduring power of the camera today. |
| Course description |
In this course we examine cultural and social histories of Western photography from its invention to the turn of the twenty-first century. Our seminars are structured around topics such as gender, race, crime, death, epidemics, science and empire, and each week students are asked to examine and discuss certain photographs within their various social and cultural contexts. An awareness of the photograph as a material object that can be bought, sold, collected, inscribed, displayed, archived, or discarded is emphasised throughout. The course engages with a range of interdisciplinary scholarly literature on photography that has developed over the past few decades, and students will learn to be more critical of photographic source material and the ways in which such material has been deployed in historical contexts.
Content note: this course deals with subject matter, including images of dead and dying human subjects, which some students may find upsetting.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | A pass or passes in 40 credits of first level historical courses or equivalent and a pass or passes in 40 credits of second level historical courses or equivalent.
Students should only be enrolled on this course with approval from the History Honours Programme Administrator. |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least 3 History courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). We will only consider University/College level courses. Applicants should note that, as with other popular courses, meeting the minimum does NOT guarantee admission.
** as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course ** |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- communicate a detailed and critical command of the histories of photography;
- read, analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship on the histories and theories of photography;
- analyse critically both textual and visual primary source materials;
- develop and present scholarly arguments in a manner befitting the discipline;
- exercise initiative and independence of thought.
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Reading List
Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (London: Sage, 2001).
Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion, 2001).
Penny Tinkler, Using Photographs in Social and Historical Research (London: Sage, 2013).
Elizabeth Edwards & Janice Hart ed., Photographs, Objects, Histories: On the Materiality of Images (London: Routledge, 2004).
Liz Wells ed., Photography: A Critical Introduction, Fifth Edition (London: Routledge, 2015).
Anne Maxwell, Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the 'Native' and the Making of European Identities (London: Leicester University Press, 1999).
James Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualisation of the British Empire (London: Reaktion, 1997).
Zahid R. Chaudhary, Afterimage of Empire: Photography in Nineteenth-Century India (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).
Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
Daniel Foliard, The Violence of Colonial Photography (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022).
Clare Anderson, Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South Asia (London: Berg, 2004).
Christos Lynteris, Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2022). |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Skills in critical analysis of visual materials;
Skills in research development;
Written communication skills;
Oral communication skills. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Stephen McDowall
Tel: (0131 6)50 3754
Email: |
Course secretary | |
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