Visual Culture and Communication

Visual Culture and Communication Programs | Visual Culture and Communication Courses

Faculty List

Professors
K. Jain, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
L. Kaplan, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
J.P. Ricco, B.A., A.M., Ph.D.
M. Sutherland, B.F.A., M.A., Ph.D.

Chair
Brian Price
CCT 3034
905-569-4646
brian.price@utoronto.ca

Associate Chair 
Ruba Kana'an
905-569-4646

Assistant to Chair
Kait Harper
905-569-4352
k.harper@utoronto.ca

Director/Curator of Blackwood Gallery
Christine Shaw
Room 3134A, CCT Bldg.
905-569-4650

Undergraduate Counsellor
Steph Sullivan
Room 3051, CCT Bldg.
905-828-3899
s.sullivan@utoronto.ca

 

Visual Culture and Communication (VCC) is an interdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum that provides students with a foundation in both visual cultural and communication studies (history, theory, and criticism) and digital communication practices (with courses taught at Sheridan Institute). The Specialist Program offers grounding in both the analysis of visual culture and the practices of visual communication. Students also take courses that are drawn from the Communication, Culture, Information & Technology program. Students graduate with an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto and a Certificate in Digital Communications from Sheridan College.

Increasingly, global cultures are dominated by visual communication, from art to advertising, propaganda to documentary photography, and film to websites. People of all generations are becoming active producers and consumers of visual culture. As digital technology expands, expertise in visual communication and design becomes essential for meeting the challenges of the global culture. VCC will prepare students to take an active and informed role in shaping 21st-century visual culture by bringing historical and theoretical study from multidisciplinary perspectives to bear on contemporary practice and debate.

Program website: www.utm.utoronto.ca/dvs

Visual Culture and Communication Programs

Visual Culture and Communication - Specialist (Arts)

Visual Culture and Communication - Specialist (Arts)

Enrolment Requirements:

Limited Enrolment – Enrolment in this program is highly competitive and will be limited as follows (meeting the minimum requirements does not guarantee admission):

  1. A minimum of 4.0 credits, including ISP100H5 and CCT109H5 and CCT110H5 and FAH101H5 and VCC101H5;
  2. A minimum CGPA determined annually. It is generally between 2.7 and 3.0 and never lower than 2.2; and
  3. A minimum 65% average among CCT109H5 and CCT110H5 and FAH101H5 and VCC101H5; with at least 60% in each course.

Tuition fees for students enrolling in this Department of Visual Studies program will be higher than for other Arts and Sciences programs.

Completion Requirements:

13.0 credits are required, including at least 1.0 credit of VCC at the 400 level.

Specialists in VCC are strongly urged to structure their studies as follows:

First Year: CCT109H5 and CCT110H5 and FAH101H5 and VCC101H5 and CIN101H5 and ISP100H5

Second Year:
1. 1.0 credit from CCT204H5 or CCT250H5 or CCT270H5
2. 1.0 credit from CCT200H5 or CCT206H5 or CCT210H5
3. 1.0 credit from VCC205H5 or VCC236H5 or VCC290H5

Third Year:
1. 2.0 credits from CCT310H5 or CCT311H5 or CCT353H5 or VCC394H5 or VCC397H5
2. 1.5 credits of VCC at the 300/400 level
3. 1.0 credit from VST410H5 or any CIN or FAH course at the 300/400 level

Fourth Year:
1. VCC400H5 and 0.5 additional credit of VCC at the 400 level
2. CCT417H5 and CCT434H5 and CCT453H5 (with permission and the appropriate prerequisites, up to 1.0 credit can be replaced with FAS246H5 or FAS346Y5 or FAS347Y5)


Note:

Students admitted to the program prior to 2022 must follow the program requirements in the 2021 academic calendar if they wish to receive the Certificate in Digital Communications from Sheridan College. The Certificate in Digital Communications will no longer be available for students enrolling in 2022 and beyond.




ERSPE1200

Visual Culture - Minor (Arts)

Visual Culture - Minor (Arts)

Completion Requirements:

4.0 total credits are required, including at least 1.0 credit at the 300/400 level.

First Year: VCC101H5

Second Year: At least 1.0 credit at the 200 level in VCC/CIN

Upper Years: 2.5 credits at the 300/400 level in VCC/CIN/VST, ENG235H5, ANT208H5, WGS336H5, WGS375H5. In consultation with the undergraduate counsellor HIS494H5 may qualify on a year-to-year basis.


ERMIN1210

Visual Culture and Communication Courses

FAH458H5 • Materials of Modern Art

This course examines materials that have played a role in the making of the modern world as well as modern art. Some are of comparatively recent invention; others are ancient but acquired new significance in the global circuits of economic modernity and the changing aesthetic concerns of modern artists. Ranging across vegetable, animal, and mineral matter(s), we will consider materials’ role in racial capitalism as well as art history; their technical properties and attendant conservation issues; their poetics; and their agencies and animacies.

Prerequisites: FAH101H5 and (FAH287H5 or FAH288H5 or FAH289H5)
Exclusions: FAH492H5 (Winter 2023)
Recommended Preparation: At least 1.0 credit in FAH or VCC at the 300 or 400-level.

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

FAH474H5 • The Technical Study of Art

This 4th-year seminar explores collaborations between art historians, conservators and material scientists in the technical study of works of art, especially of the early modern period. With ever more portable and effective means (like X-Radiography and 3D Scanning) that allow us to study the material composition and the inner structures and layers of works of art, the technical study of art has become an important new direction in art history. This course will situate technical art history (also known as technical studies) in the discipline, tracing its rise in the early 20th century as a new scientifically-based discipline that was distinguished from the traditional and intuitive practice of connoisseurship.

Prerequisites: [FAH101H5 and (FAH274H5 or FAH279H5) and 1.0 credit in FAH or VCC at the 300 or 400 level] or permission of instructor. Students with a background in Chemistry are encouraged to contact the professor.
Exclusions: FAH493H5 (Fall 2021 and Fall 2023)

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC101H5 • Introduction to Visual Culture

(Formerly CCT201H5/VCC201H5) Introduces the ways in which we use and understand images across the realms of art, advertising, mass media, and science, with examples drawn from painting, photography, film, television, and new media. Presents a diverse range of recent approaches to visual analysis and key theories of visual culture.

Exclusions: FAH201H5 or CCT201H5 or VCC201H5
Recommended Preparation: CCT109H5 or (FAH101H5 or FAH202H5)

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L/12T
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC205H5 • Monsters

This course examines monster movies and television shows alongside readings from monster literature, comics, and critical essays. It considers the social significance of the monster in order to learn something about how the threat of the monster relates to historical anxieties concerning mass-media technologies, social deviance, and the hybrid forms of visual media culture that we typically associate with the era of 21st-century convergence culture but define the genre of monster media from its ancient beginnings.

Exclusions: VCC340H5
Recommended Preparation: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L/12T/24P
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC207H5 • Urban Sites and Sounds

Introduces students to histories and theories of urban spaces emphasizing the modern city. Drawing from history, architecture, geography, and media studies, the course explores how urban change is evident in the spaces, forms, and sounds of the modern city. Case studies of specific urban environments depending on instructor's research emphasis.

Recommended Preparation: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L/12T
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC236H5 • North American Consumer Culture: 1890-Present

Examines the history and theoretical treatments of mass consumerism in North American society. We will look at the relationship between the market and cultural politics, cultural production, and mass consumption. Specific topics include: the shift from mass production to mass consumption; the growth of department stores; the rise of advertising; the relationship of race, class, and gender to consumer capitalism; the development of product brands; and the emergence of global marketing.

Exclusions: HIS336H5 or VCC336H5
Recommended Preparation: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L/12T
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC290H5 • Topics in Visual Culture and Communication

An examination of a topic in Visual Culture. Topics vary from year to year; the content in any given year depends on the instructor. This will be a lecture course.

Recommended Preparation: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L/12T
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC292H5 • Topics in Visual Culture and Communication

An in-depth examination of topics in visual and media culture, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Topics vary from year to year, and the content in any given year depends upon the instructor.

Recommended Preparation: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L/12T
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC304H5 • Visual Culture and the Politics of Identity

Examines the ways in which social-cultural identities are constructed by, and at times disrupt, various visual technologies, logics, and representational strategies. Issues and problems to be addressed include nationality, stereotyping, invisibility, and surveillance. Course materials will be drawn from modern and contemporary art and visual culture, and will also include readings from the fields of feminism, race studies, queer theory, and performance studies.

Prerequisites: CCT200H5 or VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC306H5 • Visual Culture and Colonialism

Many of our most popular and influential image technologies, visual forms, and ways of thinking about images first developed in the second half of the 19th century: the heyday of European colonialism. This course re-examines the visual culture of modernity in the light of this deeply colonial genealogy, through forms such as photography, colour printing, film, exhibitions, postcards, maps, scientific illustrations, and the body as image.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5
Exclusions: VCC302H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC308H5 • Activism in Visual and Media Culture

This course will examine political and social activism in visual and media culture focusing on the role that visual representation has played in social movements and how artists/activists have employed visual media to achieve specific ends that challenge and resist dominant visual representations and political formations.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC309H5 • Society and Spectacle

Spectacles have been vehicles of social and political power at varying historical moments and locations. Since Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle was published in 1967 the term has been deployed as a critical concept for thinking about visual culture. This course takes up a number of historical case studies in order to locate and situate phenomena associated with spectacle and spectacular visual entertainments. Topics may include the role of images in mediating contemporary social relations and the connection between spectacle and violence.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5
Exclusions: VCC209H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L/36P
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC334H5 • Media Realities

This course examines the relationship between mass media technologies and the idea of "reality" with an emphasis on the electronic and digital forms that dominate the discourse of "reality" in contemporary media culture, television, and the Internet. It will explore such questions as: How do shifting aesthetic conventions of realism, "reality" programming, and documentary inflect both theoretical and historical understandings of what constitutes reality? And how do our ideas of media technology inform these conventions and the understandings they produce?

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L/24P
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC338H5 • Picturing the Suburbs

This course considers how images of suburbia circulate between two interrelated but often counter-posed realms of visual culture: the popular genres of film, television, and new media entertainment and the iconography of "high" art practices such as painting, photography, and avant-garde film. In the process it addresses such fundamental issues as the relation between art and mass production, the aesthetics of private and public space, and the role that visual media play in constructing the socio-political space of the built environment.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L/24P
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC360H5 • South Asian Visual Culture

Popular imagery from the Indian subcontinent is now increasingly visible in the global arena, particularly via the West's discovery of 'Bollywood.' But what have these images meant to South Asians themselves, what are their histories, what traditions and practices do they draw on? This course introduces key concepts for understanding South Asian visual culture and its multifaceted postcolonial modernity. Images examined include popular prints, film, photography, comic books, urban environments, advertisements, crafts, art, propaganda, rituals, television, and the internet.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC390H5 • Topics in Visual Culture and Communication

An in-depth examination of topics in visual and media culture, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Topics vary from year to year, and the content in any given year depends upon the instructor.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC392H5 • Topics in Visual Culture and Communication

An in-depth examination of topics in visual and media culture, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Topics vary from year to year, and the content in any given year depends upon the instructor.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L
Mode of Delivery: Online, In Class

VCC394H5 • Comics and Visual Culture

Examines comics and graphic novels and their histories in print and digital media, including production, dissemination, and reception. Develops a foundational understanding of the visual grammar of comics and addresses theories of narrative.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5
Exclusions: CCT336H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC397H5 • History of Communication Design

This course examines the historical development of communication design from the industrial revolution to the present. Focuses on the emergence of design theory in changing economic, technological, and social contexts.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5
Exclusions: CCT352H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC399Y5 • Research Opportunity Program (ROP)

This course provides a richly rewarding opportunity for third or higher year students who have developed some knowledge of visual culture and communication to work on the research project of a professor in return for 399Y course credit. Students enrolled have an opportunity to become involved in original research, enhance their research skills, and share in the excitement and discovery of acquiring new knowledge. Participating faculty members post their project descriptions for the following summer and fall/winter session on the ROP website in mid-February and students are invited to apply at that time. See Experiential and International Opportunities for more details.

Prerequisites: (VCC101H5 or VCC201H5) and a minimum of 10.0 credits.
Exclusions: CCT299Y5 or CCT399Y5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC400H5 • Advanced Project

This course is designed to serve as a capstone course for VCC specialists. Students engage with advanced readings in the field and refine skills in critical analysis of selected topics in VCC. A major focus is the design and implementation of an advanced research project selected in consultation with an instructor.

Prerequisites: (VCC101H5 or VCC201H5) and completion of 13.0 credits. Open only to VCC specialists.
Exclusions: CCT400H5 or HSC400H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC405H5 • Individual Project

A research project carried out under the supervision of a faculty member. Students will carry out a research project on a selected topic related to VCC. Students must obtain signed permission from the faculty member they would like to have as their supervisor.

Prerequisites: Completion of 13.0 credits including VCC400H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC406H5 • Post-Colonialism and the Image

How has the legacy of modern colonialism across the globe impacted how we see images, how we think about them, and how we make them? And how do images perpetuate or overturn the legacy of colonial power relations? This course introduces students to the key concepts and debates in post-colonial theory as they relate to visual studies.

Prerequisites: (VCC101H5 or VCC201H5) and VCC306H5
Recommended Preparation: VCC304H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC407H5 • Architectures of Vision

Based upon Michel Foucault's work on modern architectures of surveillance, control, and discipline, this course examines such modern and contemporary architectural-visual formations as the museum, domestic interior, cinema, and the residential and commercial skyscraper. Ways in which these sites have come to define notions of citizenship, privacy and publicity, and community will be of particular focus and concern.

Prerequisites: 13.0 credits including a minimum of 1.0 VCCcredit and (VCC101H5 or VCC201H5)
Recommended Preparation: FAH289H5 and VCC304H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC409H5 • Capital, Spectacle, War

This course investigates the conjunction of contemporary global capitalism, spectacle, and militarized neo-liberal governmentality in order to develop a critical understanding of the inter-related forces that constitute the most current and politically and ethically pressing events in the world today. These may include the war on terror, the disaster film genre, technologies of surveillance, politics of humiliation and scandal, and theological and financial speculation and visions of the future. Readings will draw upon both historical and in many cases the latest work in political theory, cinema and new media studies, critical philosophy, and religious studies.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 and VCC309H5 and an additional 1.0 credit in VCC

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC410H5 • The Collective Afterlife of Things

This fourth-year interdisciplinary seminar provides students with an opportunity to examine theories of art and artistic practice in the context of contemporary visual culture, environmental devastation, global warming, climate injustice, and species extinction. Readings are drawn from eco-criticism and philosophy, visual studies and political theory, accompanied by contemporary art, film, literature in order to critically examine the concepts of “collective,” “afterlife,” and “things.”

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 and a minimum of 1.0 credit in VCC at the 300//400 level.

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC411H5 • Real Space to Cyberspace

This course examines the re-conception of traditional understandings of architecture and space -- public and private -- brought about by digital technologies. Notions of space affect our conceptions of political, social and inner life; this course investigates the impact of hyperspace and virtual reality on real and imagined space in a global context.

Prerequisites: FAH101H5 and VCC101H5 and an additional 1.0 credit in VCC

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC415H5 • Theory and Criticism of New Media

Introduces a variety of approaches for interpreting, criticizing, evaluating, and theorizing digital media with a particular emphasis on visual cultural phenomena including augmented reality and virtual reality. Examines how the thinking of new media is conditioned and altered via major theoretical models.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 and a minimum of 1.0 credit in VCC at 300/400 level

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC419H5 • Animals in Visual Culture

In 1977 the influential critic John Berger wrote an essay called “Why Look at Animals?” which framed humans’ relationship with animals as a matter of vision or, as we now say, of visual culture. More recently the humanities have been described as taking an “animal turn,” influenced by posthumanist thought and the idea that we are living in a period of unprecedented human impact on the planet, commonly (yet controversially) known as the Anthropocene. How has visual culture studies developed on or challenged Berger’s insights since he wrote that essay? Building on critiques of the category of “nature” as something that somehow pre-exists “culture” and is outside of it, which in turn challenges the terms of our distinctions between humans and animals, how does recent scholarship approach the place of images and vision in human-animal relations, and indeed the very idea of the animal itself?

This seminar investigates these questions through texts that discuss key theoretical questions and examine representations of animals across a variety of media, species, historical or geographical contexts, and disciplinary approaches.

Prerequisites: (VCC101H5 or FAH101H5) and a minimum of 1.0 VCC credit.
Exclusions: VCC490H5 - Animals in Visual Culture Fall 2018
Recommended Preparation: FAH275H5 or FAH375H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC420H5 • The Visual Culture of Automobility

Cars are the quintessential mass-produced commodities, and as such are central to the spread of capitalism and to the forms, spaces, affects, and imaginaries of modernity, postmodernity and beyond. Drawing on anthropology, geography, architectural theory and cinema studies as well as visual studies, art history and critical theory, this seminar examines the visual cultures of automobility over a range of historical periods and cultural contexts.

Prerequisites: 13.0 credits including (VCC101H5 or VCC201H5) and a minimum of 1.0 VCC credit at the 300/400 level
Exclusions: VCC490H5 topics course - The Visual Culture of Automobility.

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC425H5 • Art and Media Culture

Explores intersections of art, pop culture and mass media in Europe and North America between World War II and 1970. Reviews how the definition of art moved into an expanded field of media culture.

Prerequisites: 13.0 credits including (VCC101H5 or VCC201H5) and a minimum of 1.0 VCC credit
Recommended Preparation: FAH289H5 and VCC308H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC427H5 • Participatory Media

In order to explore the complex social and political issues surrounding the discourse of democratic participation in today's "new media" culture, this course provides a historical and theoretical survey of "old" media technologies that embrace the aesthetics of participation, running from popular theatre forms (including vaudeville and Chautauqua) to call-in radio shows, avant-garde and novelty films, activist video art, and the audience-based talk and game shows of fifties television that most directly prefigure the participatory genres of contemporary media programming.

Prerequisites: (VCC101H5 or VCC201H5) and at least 1.0 credit in VCC

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24P/24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC490H5 • Topics in Visual Culture and Communication

An in-depth examination of topics in visual and media culture, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Topics vary from year to year, and the content in any given year depends upon the instructor.

Prerequisites: 13.0 credits including (VCC101H5 or VCC201H5) and a minimum of 1.0 VCC credit.

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VCC492H5 • Topics in Visual Culture and Communication

An in-depth examination of topics in visual and media culture, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Topics vary from year to year, and the content in any given year depends upon the instructor.

Prerequisites: VCC101H5 or VCC201H5

Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24L
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VST410H5 • Internship in Visual Studies

This internship course provides an opportunity for students to gain practical experience at an institution or business closely related to the arts and to visual studies. This is especially tailored for mature and self-disciplined students in their final year of study, who are ready to apply knowledge acquired in previous courses and are planning a career in the arts and cultural sector. Students registered in any DVS program are eligible to apply. Students work closely with the DVS internship coordinator to establish suitability. Regular updates and a final report and presentation will be required. The final grade for the course will be based on these, along with the assessment of the employer.

Prerequisites: Minimum completion of 5.5 credits in DVS Programs and 8.0 additional credits and minimum CGPA 2.5 and and permission of internship coordinator.

Course Experience: Partnership-Based Experience
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

VST410Y5 • Internship in Visual Studies

This internship course provides an opportunity for students to gain practical experience at an institution or business closely related to the arts and to visual studies. This is especially tailored for mature and self-disciplined students in their final year of study, who are ready to apply knowledge acquired in previous courses and are planning a career in the arts and cultural sector. Students registered in any DVS program are eligible to apply. Students work closely with the DVS internship coordinator to establish suitability. Regular updates and a final report and presentation will be required. The final grade for the course will be based on these, along with the assessment of the employer.

Prerequisites: Minimum of 5.5 credits in DVS program courses and 8.0 additional credits and minimum CGPA 2.5 and permission of internship coordinator
Exclusions: VST410H5

Course Experience: Partnership-Based Experience
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Total Instructional Hours: 24S
Mode of Delivery: In Class

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