Visual/Popular Culture and Storytelling

In a today’s society, visual images became central to our communicative practices, therefore, it is essential to develop our understanding of how we create, negotiate, and respond to popular culture and visual codes. This course provides with a number of theoretical and analytical tools to examine how visual images produce cultural meanings and power relations, as well as how the viewer experiences and practices the production of meaning via looking. The main aim of the course is to develop skills to identify, analyze, interpret and critically evaluate cases in popular and visual studies. The course addresses different issues of popular and visual culture across various media forms, e.g. gender, body and race representations in advertising, films, news media, and social networks.

The course is aimed at introducing students to the theoretical principles of visual and popular culture; revealing multi- and intersdisciplinarity of the field; developing skills to identify, analyze, interpret and critically evaluate cases in popular and visual studies.

Bachelor diploma, English language B2 level.

Class topics: • Understanding popular culture. Everyday life and popular culture. • Themes in popular culture. Culture wars and the study of popular culture. • Class in popular culture. The case of “White Trash”. • Gender and sexuality in popular culture. Love and romantic utopias. • Popular and marginal representations of identities. Spectacles of the other. • Understanding visual culture. The power of image in everyday life. Visual storytelling. Thinking visually. • Visual cues. Colour, form, depth, movement. • Seeing is believing. Visual semiotics. Visual analysis. • Seeing is desiring. Visual effects and persuasion. • Visual culture in perspective. Communicating effectively in the visual age.