AIS: Visual Rhetoric: An Interdisciplinary Approach.

Catalog description

This course will introduce students to persuasive techniques in images and to the use of visual metaphor and visual narrative. We will perform close readings of images and create our own visual arguments, using composition fundamentals (e.g., color, shape, direction, texture, light--or its absence) and figurative elements (e.g., metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole, and personification). Throughout the semester, we will analyze and design images and consider the ways in which visual representations are manifested in various fields of study as we survey images from disciplines that include graphics/information design, fine arts, art history, advertising, and cultural studies. Theorists will include Mariani, Saussure, Peirce, Tufte, Bolton, Grusin, Newbold, Barnes, Patterson, Gunther, van Leeuwen, Golombisky, Hagen, and Lester.