Department of English

Your favorite writer’s favorite theorist, Roland Barthes is one of the most influential critics of the twentieth century, with Camera Lucida (1980) standing as his late-career opus. The work is a foundational text in film and media studies as well as a devastating work of mourning and a progenitor of auto-theory. Toward the end of his life, Barthes shifted his focus from semiotics toward a phenomenological exploration of lived experience: the results are staggering. This course proposes that a careful reading of Barthes’s late work offers not only a powerful critical framework, but also a compelling way to think about how to live a full and rich life.

This course will be a deep dive into Camera Lucida (1980) alongside selections from Barthes’s late-career texts, including A Lover’s Discourse (1977), How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces (2002), and The Neutral: Lecture Course at the College de France (1977–1978) (2002). Along the way we will study the secondary literature around Barthes and read his work in conversation with his contemporaries. We will watch films whose subject matter explores themes of photography, memory, and mourning (such as Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) and Edward Yang’s Yi Yi (2000)), read photographs in books, and, of course, look at (and take) many photographs. Field visits to art museums will allow us to study various photographs and video work firsthand. We will ask questions like How does an image move us? Why does an image move us? What is the relationship between memory and the image? If terms like “postmodern” or “post-structuralism” have ever piqued your curiosity, then this course is for you.

This course will train students to read and enjoy theory while developing tools for the critical analysis of visual culture. Assignments will include a presentation and two short writing exercises; students may choose between a creative or critical final assignment. No prior experience with theory or film studies is required.