COM3550

Eyewitness: Reportage, Representation and War ( 6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL)

Leader: Associate Professor Kevin Foster

Offered:
Not offered in 2006.

Synopsis: This unit offers a critical historical analysis of so-called factual, documentary representations of war in words and images. It examines how and by whom conflicts have been represented from the mid-19th century to the present; how the physical and technical constraints within which reporters and photographers operate effect the nature of their reports and images; how their reports are censored, by whom, in accordance with whose guidelines and with what ends. It examines how these reports and images are transmitted from the battlefield and how the mediating technologies influence the nature and inflect the form of the reports and pictures which constitute the war report.

Objectives: By the conclusion of the units students will be able to: 1Demonstrate a clear understanding of the historical development of nominally factual, documentary forms of war reporting and their key technological developments and innovations. 2.Identify, explain and critique the processes, effects and purposes of the major forms of censorship which have determined the representations of war from the mid-19th century to the present day. 3.Present an informed reading of individual reports and images from specific conflicts, accounting for the influences of physical and technical constraints, mode of transmission, information management regimes and intended deployment in the shaping of the final report/image. 4.Explain how the differing media which have been employed to disseminate accounts of war - newspapers, photography, newsreel, radio, television, video, internet streaming have influenced, inflected and structured content at differing historical junctures. 5.Account for and explain the processes by which governments, military and the media inflect the reception of images and reports of war in order to achieve specific political or cultural effects. 6.Identify the processes by which the preferred readings promoted by government, the military and the media have been challenged, subverted or questioned in contrary readings of key media texts. 7.Demonstrate how war reporters/photographers have featured in fiction and film and explain how these representations offer an array of alternative opinions on how and why specific conflicts have been represented in particular ways. Students taking this unit will be expected to demonstrate a deeper, more sophisticated theoretical grasp of the concepts introduced, as well as wider reading at primary and secondary level, than students taking COM2550. They will be expected to take a leadership role in group work and will be required to append annotated bibliographies to all written work.

Assessment: Essay (1500 words): 35%; Group project (1500 words): 35%; Examination 1 hour: 20%; Seminar participation: 10%

Contact Hours: one one hour lecture and one two hour tutorial

Prerequisites: An approved First year sequence

Prohibitions: COM2550