Announcing a New UWM-based Student Research E-Journal!
Signs and Wonders: The Student Ezine of Visual Culture

This online journal will seek research contributions from students in many disciplines, including Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Communication, Film Studies, Mass Communication, Art, Women's Studies, Modern Studies, Cultural Geography, History, Architecture, and Sociology.

The first issue will be available online this coming May. The inaugural issue will be a specially-themed issue on advertising as visual culture, produced and edited by students who are taking Anthropology 641, Ads in American Culture in Spring 2002

Anthropology 641: Ads in American Culture

Initial class meeting: Wednesday, 1:30 – 4:10 p.m.; thereafter by arrangement Instructor: Dr. Alan Aycock (aycock@uwm.edu)

Description:

How the words and images of advertising reflect and shape American culture; the use of ads to fashion one’s own daily cultural experience and practices; the emergence in American public culture of “image tribes” based on advertising; resistance to advertising through “culture-jamming”; the implications of advertising for the spread of global capitalism.

The course will cover traditional sorts of analysis of advertising, but will also be a bit broader than this. For instance, we will examine advertising not only in its restricted commercial sense, but also including persuasive images arising from political contests, medical-scientific public awareness campaigns, local community and institutional fundraising or recruitment drives, media “panics,” celebrity public relations extravanganzas, and cause- or issue- related promotional events. Finally, we will look at advertising not only as a genre unto itself, but as one aspect of a range of “practices of looking” that comprise American visual culture, including practices associated with looking at TV, magazines, going shopping, and surfing the Web.

Prerequisites:

Prerequisite for this course is any one of the following:

(1) at least junior standing & major in Anthropology; or (2) graduate standing in any program;

or (3) permission of the instructor.

Part of the course will be taught face-to-face, and part online. All necessary computer skills will be provided by the instructor, though students should already know – in general – how to browse the Web, how to use email, and how to work in a Windows environment.

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