Course Overview + Goals
This course examines changing technologies of image capture/(re)production/circulation in the Middle East from the turn of the century through today. We examine historical moments through an appreciation of changing technological advancements of visual material. From changing printing practices on postcards, consumer grade cameras, increasing photographs in periodicals, TVs & VHS, leading up to networked technologies and the digital morass in which we now live.
Across the arch of the course, emergent technological capabilities of visuality become entwined in issues of nationalism, revolt, consumerism, tourism, changing gender roles, and boundaries of sexuality.
The second half of the course focuses on the contemporary landscape of smartphones/internet/apps/digitality and the dizzying array of visual material in which we now drown. From protests to citizen journalists, emergent political movements and social media on smartphones, from Grindr to surveillance, selfies, & sex. We will consider broader themes as they relate to the Middle East.
Finally, there is an emphasis for students to develop and integrate visual material in their MA research. We will explore some visual methods across the course and you will learn how to create a digital story paying special attention to not simply using visual material as the “represention” of your argument.
Weeks 1-7
Technologies & Materialities of Vision
These weeks cover various technological advancements that changed photographic production, reproduction, and cirrculation in the contexts of the Middle East. We will examine decades of expanding visual cultures before digital technologies
Weeks 9-15
Digital Terrains of Visuality across the Middle East
The second half of this course pivots to explore the past 50+ years of increasing digitality & visuality. Each week presents a different frame/entry point from which we will see and think through parts of the Middle East. These “series of visions” will open up many methods for students to consider using visual materials
2020
I taught this seminar in Spring 2020 at the Kevorkian Center; what stands here is its archive, rebuilt from the site of that year.
NEST-GA 3002, a graduate seminar at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University, Spring 2020. Tuesdays, 2 to 4:45 pm, 255 Sullivan Street. Jared McCormick.
The images are credited where they appear. The postcards are from my own collection of Lebanese postcards, View from the View, each with its card number; the week 12 posters are scans from Samuel Katz’s Battleground Lebanon (Firepower Pictorials, 1992) and from prints in my files; the photograph behind week 9 is a Getty Images editorial picture; the films and clips come from the sources named under them.
The text and the design of this site are published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license, so that they can circulate: use them with credit for anything that is not for sale, and share what you make the same way. Rights in the images remain with their makers and holders.
To cite this site: McCormick, Jared. Visual Cultures of the Middle East: Moving Images from Daguerreotypes to Smartphones. Course site, Spring 2020. Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University. visualizingthemiddleeast.com.
Questions, corrections, and requests to use this material: jsm22@nyu.edu.
