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Home > SMLLC home > SN1119 Visualising Cuba: Text, Image and Representation
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SN1119 Visualising Cuba: Text, Image and Representation

Terms: 1-2
Convenor: James Kent

Assessment: 
Coursework essays worth 30% and 60% respectively of the final mark for the course and one in-class assessment worth 10% of the final mark. 

One formative piece (0%) [Seminar contribution: Essay workshop]
First Essay:
1,200-1,500 words
Second Essay: 1,500-2,000 words

Overview: On this course students will study specific visions of Cuba by observing visual texts and representations of the country and in turn will develop an understanding of how and why we see the nation as we do. We will explore photography and filmic texts in order to scrutinize the relevance of these mediums in twentieth and early twenty-first century culture. We will contextualise our readings of these texts by exploring various critical historical moments in Cuban history (including the fall of the Machado dictatorship, the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the Cuban ‘Special Period’). Students will also be introduced to some areas of basic photographic, film, documentary and image theory and will learn how to apply these theoretical concepts to visions of Cuba in texts, images and representations.

Library reading lists

Key Bibliography:

David Bailey, Havana (London: Steidl Verlag, 2006)
Walker Evans, Havana 1933 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989)
Burt Glinn, Havana: the revolutionary moment (Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2002))

Filmography:

Soy Cuba (1964), Mikhail Kalatozov
Guantanamera (1990), Tomás Gutiérrez Alea & Juan Carlos Tabío
Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Wim Wenders
Suite Habana (2003), Fernando Pérez.

Recommended further reading:

Gerry Badger, The genius of photography: how photography has changed our lives (London: Quadrille, 2007)

Michael Chanan, Cuban Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004)

Michael Chanan, The Politics of Documentary (London: BFI, 2007)

Lincoln Cushing, ¡Revolución! : Cuban poster art (San Francisco, California/London: Chronicle/Hi Marketing, 2003)

Russ Davidson, Latin American posters: public aesthetics and mass politics (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2006)

Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall (eds.), Visual culture: the reader (London: Thousand Oaks, 1999) 

Ian Jeffrey, How to Read a Photograph: Understanding, Interpreting and Enjoying the Great Photographer (London: Thames & Hudson 2008)

Liz Wells, The Photography Reader (London: Routledge, 2003)

 

  
 
 
 
 

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