Visual Communication

Catalog description

Credits 3. 3 Lecture Hours. COURSE OVERVIEW. Explores the study of images as forms of communication across public, cultural and institutional contexts. Examines how visuals convey meaning, evoke emotion, construct identity and/or shape public perception. Considers photography, advertising, memorials, protest imagery, comics and/or other visual texts as rhetorical and symbolic acts. Course content and discussion may include real-world imagery that reflects social conflict, violence, inequality and/or sensitive subjects for purposes of analysis. RELEVANCE AND APPLICATION. Engages visual literacy central to media work, journalism, advocacy, design and public communication. Builds recognition of how images influence opinion, memory and behavior across digital, institutional and interpersonal environments. Supports academic preparation for advanced study in media studies, rhetoric, journalism and cultural communication. Provides tools useful in professions requiring visual strategy, branding, storytelling or critical evaluation of mediated content. Contributes to civic awareness in a society where public debate increasingly occurs through images. DEEPENING UNDERSTANDINGS. Considers ways visuals act not as neutral reflections of reality, but as constructed representations shaped by framing, selection and context. Highlights how different audiences interpret the same image differently, prompting reflection on perspective, bias and cultural positioning. Encourages recognition of how images communicate power, belonging and/or exclusion; sometimes subtly, sometimes provocatively. TOPICS AND THEMES. May include study of photography and public memory; advertising and consumer imagery; visual culture in politics, protest and activism; comics and graphic narrative; memorials and commemorative design; digital imagery, memes and viral circulation; depictions of identity, embodiment or community through visual media. May involve visual curation or creation of original materials. Course content may include powerful or controversial imagery, such as depictions of violence, tragedy, ideological symbolism or material some may consider profane or objectionable, examined for the purpose of informed and critical interpretation of visual communication. Prerequisites: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.