Feminist Surveillance Studies

"How is information used as a tool of oppression?"
is this course's motivating question.

This class uses an intersectional feminist
perspective to question the values of
transparency, access, and spectatorship embedded
in surveillance aesthetics. It will highlight the
gaze, the body, mapping, games, and others as
sites of contestation and intervention.

This questioning will include readings on
historical examples of surveillance technologies,
such as Michel Foucault's study of Jeremy
Bentham's model for the panopticon prison, Tina
Campt's writing on the mugshots of the Freedom
Riders, and others. We will read pieces by
contemporary theorists such as Simone Browne, Hito
Streyel, and the Feminist Surveillance Studies
collection.

It will also include film screenings, such as
Harun Farocki's Prison Images and Michael Kiler's
The Giant. Moreover, it will consider artists
whose creative practice includes surveillance,
such as Hank Willis Thomas, Julia Scher, Andrea
Blum, Margia Kramer, Blaise Tobia, Ernie Gehr,
Xiuzhen Yin, Natalie Bookchin, Peili Zhang, and
Peter Campus.