Reading Photography

Streaming Media

Submission Type

75-minute Hands-on Workshop

Abstract

Our Blended Learning course, “Reading Photography” focuses on select photographs, both canonical and non-canonical, from the earliest daguerreotypes to the expanding global image ecologies of the present. We study the social, intellectual, and art histories of photography, interrogating concepts of visual representation and issues of technology, identity, and power, while employing the theoretical lenses of writers such as Benjamin, Kracauer, Diawara, Sebald, and Moten.

A team of faculty and staff designed online course modules on Scalar, organized around the photographs, in order to allow for a a slow teaching approach. The digital modules were designed to increase student engagement, enhance opportunities for collaboration, and deepen the knowledge-base and resources that students will draw on for their assessed work. Our design for this course was based upon the idea of “slow teaching”—a pedagogical orientation that recognizes the challenges and distractions of our plugged in world, and the potential risks for too much dispersal of ideas and actions when teaching in a reactive way with technologies. Simultaneously, our approach responds to changes in the way that we are interpreting and using photographs, in digital formats and in digital environments. The critical reading of photographs using slow teaching is premised on the recognition that not only photographs, but our methods of engaging with, looking at, reading, citing, and collecting them are changing in ways that have not been adequately integrated into the pedagogical environment. We are engaging with less material rather than more and digging deeper and with more analytical heft. The premise of our course is not anti-technology. It is that a blended approach can enable close looking and close reading when teaching about photography and that it can promote an advanced understanding of research methodologies.

We are proposing to engage the Bryn Mawr audience in a slow looking exercise, followed by discussion and an outline of our use of Scalar and moodle as research and assignment sites, respectively. We will discuss our successes and challenges, while outlining the way in which rigorous research can be matched with free writing and experimental methods.

Session

Workshop

Location

Thomas 104

Start Date

5-17-2017 1:00 PM

End Date

5-17-2017 2:20 PM

Comments

Additional article links:

https://www.academia.edu/20226947/The_Power_of_Patience_2013_

http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/11/the-power-of-patience

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May 17th, 1:00 PM May 17th, 2:20 PM

Reading Photography

Thomas 104

Our Blended Learning course, “Reading Photography” focuses on select photographs, both canonical and non-canonical, from the earliest daguerreotypes to the expanding global image ecologies of the present. We study the social, intellectual, and art histories of photography, interrogating concepts of visual representation and issues of technology, identity, and power, while employing the theoretical lenses of writers such as Benjamin, Kracauer, Diawara, Sebald, and Moten.

A team of faculty and staff designed online course modules on Scalar, organized around the photographs, in order to allow for a a slow teaching approach. The digital modules were designed to increase student engagement, enhance opportunities for collaboration, and deepen the knowledge-base and resources that students will draw on for their assessed work. Our design for this course was based upon the idea of “slow teaching”—a pedagogical orientation that recognizes the challenges and distractions of our plugged in world, and the potential risks for too much dispersal of ideas and actions when teaching in a reactive way with technologies. Simultaneously, our approach responds to changes in the way that we are interpreting and using photographs, in digital formats and in digital environments. The critical reading of photographs using slow teaching is premised on the recognition that not only photographs, but our methods of engaging with, looking at, reading, citing, and collecting them are changing in ways that have not been adequately integrated into the pedagogical environment. We are engaging with less material rather than more and digging deeper and with more analytical heft. The premise of our course is not anti-technology. It is that a blended approach can enable close looking and close reading when teaching about photography and that it can promote an advanced understanding of research methodologies.

We are proposing to engage the Bryn Mawr audience in a slow looking exercise, followed by discussion and an outline of our use of Scalar and moodle as research and assignment sites, respectively. We will discuss our successes and challenges, while outlining the way in which rigorous research can be matched with free writing and experimental methods.