This course focuses on novels and films from the last twenty-five years (nominally 1985–2010) marked by their relationship to extreme violence and transgression. Our texts will focus on serial killers, torture, rape, and brutality, but they also explore notions of American history, gender and sexuality, and reality television—sometimes, they delve into love or time or the redemptive role of art in late modernity. Our works are a motley assortment, with origins in the U.S., France, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Japan and South Korea. The broad global era marked by this period is one of acceleration, fragmentation, and late capitalism; however, we will also consider national specificities of violent representation, including particulars like the history of racism in the United States, the role of politeness in bourgeois Austrian culture, and the effect of Japanese manga on vividly graphic contemporary Asian cinema.
We will explore the politics and aesthetics of the extreme; affective questions about sensation, fear, disgust, and shock; and problems of torture, pain, and the unrepresentable. We will ask whether these texts help us understand violence, or whether they frame violence as something that resists comprehension; we will consider whether form mitigates or colludes with violence. Finally, we will continually press on the central term in the title of this course: what, specifically, is violence? (Can we only speak of plural “violences”?) Is violence the same as force? Do we know violence when we see it? Is it something knowable or does it resist or even destroy knowledge? Is violence a matter for a text’s content—who does what, how, and to whom—or is it a problem of form: shock, boredom, repetition, indeterminacy, blankness? Can we speak of an aesthetic of violence? A politics or ethics of violence? Note the question that titles our last week: Is it the case that we are what we see? If so, what does our obsession with ultraviolence mean, and how does contemporary representation turn an accusing gaze back at us?

This art history video discussion looks at Petrus Christus' "Portrait of a Carthusian", 1446 (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

This art history video discussion examines Petrus Christus' "Portrait of a Young Woman," c. 1470, oil on oak, 29 x 22.50 cm (Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).

Almost 1400 photographs, primarily studio portraits of people involved in the arts, including musicians; dancers; artists; literati; theatrical, film, and television actors and actresses. Includes black entertainers, particularly those associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Most are individual portraits, but also includes some group portraits. Sitters represented in ten or more photos are: Judith Anderson, Tallulah Bankhead, Anton Dolin, Ram Gopal, Hugh Laing, Alicia Markova, and Ethel Waters. A much smaller portion of the collection is an assortment of American landscapes.

This collection uses primary sources to explore The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Students will make connections between their personal experiences and a work of art and use visual analysis to describe a portrait.

Students will "read" a visual image very much like they would read words in a story.

Students will spend more time looking at details and write an imagined interview with a sitter.

Students will apply what they have learned about portraits in a formal writing exercise.

Students will examine artworks, research literature, and create study drawings and a 3-D model for a monument to a literary figure.

Students will examine Charles-Antoine Coypel's "Self-Portrait" and understand what he shows in this work.

Students will use Van Gogh's "Portrait of Joseph Roulin" as inspiration for their own portraits of friends in the classroom.

In this lesson middle and high school students in grades 6-12, students will learn the basics of composing portraits of friends, this is designed to gain maximum engagement in the lesson. Following a basic photography lesson students will take four types of portraits to post and critique.  Students will take a final photo at end of course, an improved shot of one prior image.  All will be posted in an ePortfolio.

Students write descriptions and create portraits of characters from the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen using a variety of media.

This resource was created by Denise Stevenson, in collaboration with Lynn Bowder, as part of ESU2's Mastering the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education and experiential learning.

Poster showing full-length portrait of John Joseph Pershing. Promotional goal: U.S. F3.J2 1918.

Exhibit poster showing a portrait photograph of a man who lost his arm in an industrial accident, also shows a view of him at a machine in a woodworking shop. Poster caption: This man who lost an arm in an industrial accident in Cleveland, invented a good substitute arm, wears it at work, and uses it in earning his living. He has made good by his own unaided efforts. The average man, however, needs a lift in the way of training. Exhibit of the Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men and the Red Cross Institute for the Blind.

This collection uses primary sources to explore women in the Civil War. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Students will compare and contrast an academic and an Impressionist portrait through a writing exercise and discussion. Each student will then write a formal commission letter to one of artists, requesting a portrait.