Texts and Contexts 1

Display Schedule

Code Completion Credits Range Language Instruction Semester
307ETAC1 exam 2 2 seminar hours (45 min) of instruction per week, 32 to 42 hours of self-study English winter

Subject guarantor

Tomáš DVOŘÁK

Name of lecturer(s)

Tomáš DVOŘÁK

Department

The subject provides Department of Photography

Contents

06/10: introduction

20/10: Medium specificity, photography and intermediality

3/11: David Bate (online)

24/11: Reproducibility (graphic, photographic and digital techniques of reproduction, reproduction and documentation of artworks)

08/12: Portrait photography and the problem of identity in modern and contemporary societies

22/12: discussion of seminar essay topics

Learning outcomes

Students will be able to develop and critically evaluate theories, concepts and methods of their field and gain insight into contemporary scholarly literature and canonical works relevant for the thematic areas of the final state exam in history and theory of photography.

Prerequisites and other requirements

Advanced English, the ability to study and discuss scholarly texts in English.

Literature

Recommended literature:

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill & Wang, 1980. Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana Press, 1977, pp. 15-51.

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: Noonday Press, 1972.

Batchen, Geoffrey. Every Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2001. Batchen, Geoffrey. Burning with Desire. The Conception of Photography. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997. Benjamin, Walter. On Photography. London: Reaktion Books, 2015.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Cambridge - London: Harvard University Press, 2008, pp. 19-165, 271-314.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: BBC & Penguin Books, 1972.

Beshty, Walead (ed.). Picture Industry: A Provisional History of the Technical Image, 1844-2018. Zurich: JRP/Ringier 2018.

Burbridge, Ben - Annebella Pollen (eds.). Photography Reframed: New Visions in Contemporary Photographic Practice. London: Bloomsbury 2018.

Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1990. Durden, Mark (ed.). Fifty Key Writers on Photography. London: Routledge, 2013.

Edwards, Steve. Photography: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Into the Universe of Technical Images. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Flusser, Vilém. Towards a Philosophy of Photography. London: Reaktion Books, 2000.

Foster, Hal et al, Art Since 1900. Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. London: Thames & Hudson, 2011. Freund, Gisèle. Photography & Society. Boston: David R. Godine, 1980.

Frizot, Michel et al. A New History of Photography. Cologne: Könemann, 1998.

Goldberg, Vicki (ed.), Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981.

Lister, Martin (ed.), 2013. The Photographic Image in Digital Culture. London: Routledge, 2013.

Read, Shirley - Mike Simmons (eds.). Photographers and Research: The Role of Research in Contemporary Photographic Practice. London: Routledge 2017.

Rubinstein, Daniel (ed.). Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in the Digital Age. London: Routledge 2019. Sekula, Alan. Photography Against the Grain. Halifax: The Press of Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador, 2003.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. London: Penguin Books, 1977.

Sturken, Marita - Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking. An Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009.

Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographs and Histories. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988.

Trachtenberg, Alan. Classic Essays on Photography. New Haven, Conn.: Leete's Island Books, 1980.

Warren, Lynne (ed.). Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography. Vol. 1+2. New York - London: Routledge, 2006.

Wells, Liz (ed.). Photography: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge, 2015. Zylinska, Joanna. Nonhuman Photography. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2017.

Evaluation methods and criteria

The course is evaluated by a graded exam. Students must actively participate in the seminar discussions and

  1. choose a relevant scholarly text for each session, present it in the class (5 minutes) or submit a written summary (2-3 pages) of each text
  2. submit a critical essay (5-10 pages) by January 9, 2026, which will be discussed at the exam.

Note

-

Further information

Course may be repeated

Schedule for winter semester 2025/2026:

06:00–08:0008:00–10:0010:00–12:0012:00–14:0014:00–16:0016:00–18:0018:00–20:0020:00–22:0022:00–24:00
Mon
room LAZ-111
Room. No. 111
(Lažanský palác)
DVOŘÁK T.
15:40–17:15
(lecture parallel1)
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Date Day Time Tutor Location Notes No. of paralel
Mon 15:40–17:15 Tomáš DVOŘÁK Room. No. 111
Lažanský palác		 lecture parallel1

Schedule for summer semester 2025/2026:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

The subject is a part of the following study plans