Instructor:
Nearly one billion people suffer from hunger. Not surprisingly, depictions of hunger are everywhere: from advertising, fashion, and film to literature, music, and painting. In this course, we will focus on symbolic constructions of “hunger” in a diverse selection of aesthetic objects from the Global South. We will learn to “look” closely, carefully, and critically. We will also consider some of the ways aesthetic objects might challenge or reproduce structures that shape our society and our understanding of hunger. To this end, we will explore such questions as: What constitutes an aesthetic object? How might we look at, contemplate, analyze, and interpret such an object? What and how do the aesthetic objects under consideration contribute to our understanding of the world we live in?