The American West in Pictures
Fall 2009
LIB 41
Tues - Thurs. 1:10 - 2:30 PM
Professor Robert Slifkin
LIB 320
email: rslifkin@reed.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays 9 AM - 12 PM or by appointment
The American West has occupied a special place within the social and political imagination of the United States since the country's founding. This class will examine how the region–itself a changing concept as western expansion progressed–was visually represented in variety of media such as prints, maps, photographs, films as well as paintings and sculptures, from its first conception in the late 18th century to the present. We will explore how these various models of spatial representation operated for the different populations occupying the region as wells the ramifications and challenges of representing a sense of place, particularly in a visual lexicon.
Course requirements:
Attendance and participation (unexcused absences may cause significant grade deflation).
Completion of all assignments. NO EXTENSIONS. All late work (barring documented emergencies) will be docked a letter grade each day past deadline.
Required texts (available at the Reed College Bookstore):
Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972).
Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies [1971], (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2009).
Lawrence Welschler, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).