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3295. Special Topics

1.00 - 6.00 credits | May be repeated for credit.

Prerequisites: Prerequisites and recommended preparation vary.

Grading Basis: Graded


Last Refreshed: 29-SEP-23 05.20.15.070857 AM
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Term Campus Instruction Mode Instructor Section Session Schedule Location Enrollment Notes
Fall 2023 Storrs In Person Falconi, Jose 001 Reg MoWe 3:35pm‑4:50pm
ARTB 222 5/10 In this course, we will examine several cases in which witnesses seeking to overcome the limits of oral expression have resorted to images in the hope of conveying the truth of their testimony more effectively. By analyzing historical examples that range from early modernity–17th-century testimony by indigenous subjects on the brutality of the Spanish domination in the Americas—to the deployment of billboards in the US of AIDS-related deaths in the early 1990s, the course will not only introduce students to perhaps the most decisive of dialectics within semiotic theory—the critical difference between showing something and telling something—but also how certain artistic practices have has produced some of the most enduring, and memorable artworks precisely by showing the problematic limits of telling. The course will also cover the theoretical foundations of how testimony works, as well as the role of witnessing in historical accounts, providing the students a unique training/perspective on how the realms of ethics and aesthetics are inextricably linked when it comes to confronting testimonies of inconceivable acts or events.