Faculty of Social Sciences
Visual Culture
63-012-18
Dr. Galia Yanoshevsky
Compulsory course
1-3 years, semester credits
Reception hours: Wednesday 2-3 p.m.
Office: North Campus, Kort building 1004, 4th floor, room 402
Lecturer's email: galia.yanoshevsky@biu.ac.il
A. Course objectives and purposes:
This class is about visual culture. We will start out with some theories of pictures (Barthes,
Mitchell, etc.). We will also introduce the theory of argumentation and will look at the various
components of an argument (claims, premises, conclusions). We will then try to find out if and how
visuals (photographs, movies, advertisements, newspapers, digital media, cinema) can be
argumentative (i.e. appeal to our reason) and not just persuasive (i.e. appeal to our emotions).
B. Course Topics:
 Introduction – Picture theory (Mitchell, Barthes)
- Semiotics: images, symbols, representation
 Introduction – Argumentation theory (Aristotle, Perelman)
- the rhetorical triangle: ethos, pathos, logos
- the speaker
- the audience
- the structure of argument
- appeal to emotions
 Pictures as arguments
o Text and image
o Framing in the written press
o Image events
o Making a point through photography: photographers and political controversies.
o Emotions and advertisements
o The reasonable language of advertisements
o Visual arguments in scientific textbooks (optional)
o Visualizing geography – the visual construction of public space
o Cinema – photo-montage, Kuleshov effect.
C. Course Requirements and Final Grading*
Reading assignments: 2 reading assignments, each 10% (altogether 20%). A question will be posted
each week prior to the class pertaining to an article. Each question will be considered as a "reading
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assignment". Each student will have to read all articles, but to answer two questions only during the
semester.
Exam – 80%
Note: presence is mandatory. More than three absences will result in automatic course cancellation.
D. Course Program
1. Introduction
Read: Mitchell, Barthes
2. Introduction
Read: Perelman
3. The rhetorical triangle: the speaker, the audience and the message/ethos, Pathos, Logos
Read: Toulmin
4. The structure of argument
Read: Amossy, Doxa
5. Reaching the reader : Premises
Read Groarke
6. Can Toulmin be fitted for visuals?
Read Kress & van Leeuwen
7. Front page layout and argumentation
Read Delicath & Deluca
8. Framing Image events
Read Cara Finnegan
9. Photography 1. The skull controversy and the naturalistic enthymeme
Read Ruth Oren ("Photography has taught me two things")
10. Photography 2. The Encyclopedia of Israel in Images 1950-1952. Read Ruth Oren.
Read Helene Joffee
11. The language of advertisement – Appeal to emotion and decision making
Read Nakamura ("I will do everything")
12. Cinema and photomontage
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umfiwI-7I0M
14. Conclusion and mock-up exam.
Bibliography
References with an * are compulsory
Adam, Jean-Michel, and Marc Bonhomme. L'argumentation publicitaire : rhétorique de l'éloge et
de la persuasion. Paris: Nathan, 1997.
* Amossy, Ruth, “How to Do Things with Doxa: Toward an Analysis of Argumentation in
Discourse”, Poetics Today 23:3 (Fall 2002), pp. 465-487. [‫]תדפיס‬
Journal + Ejournal (131426) – in the Literature library
* Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms. Ed. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Lang,
1985.
001.51 BAR r (82728) – in the English library
Birdsell, David S.and Leo Groarke. "Toward a Theory of Visual Argument.” Argumentation and
Advocacy 33 (1996): 1-10.
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Blair, Anthony J. “The Possibility and Actuality of Visual Arguments." Argumentation and
Advocacy 33 (1996): 23-39.
Blair, Anthony J., “The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments.” Defining Visual Rhetoric. Eds. Charles A.
Hill and Marguerite Helmers. Mahwah, New Jersey, London: Laurence Erlbaum Associates, 2004:
41-62.
Blair, Anthony J., “The Possibility and Actuality of Visual Arguments." Argumentation and
Advocacy 33 (1996): 23-39.
Burgin, Victor. “Looking at photographs.” Thinking Photography, Ed. Victor Burgin. London:
Macmillan, 1994 (1982).
* Cole, Joshua, "Remembering the Battle of Paris", French Politics, Culture and Society, vol. 21,
no. 3, Fall 2003, pp. 21-50.
Ejournal (1217529)
* Delicath, John W. and Kevin Michael Deluca. “Image Events, The Public Sphere, and
Argumentative Practice: The Case of Radical Environmental Groups.” Argumentation 17 (2003):
315-333.
Ejournal (131783)
Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader. London: Hutchinson, 1981.
* Finnegan, Cara, 2001, "The Naturalistic Enthymeme and Visual Argument: Photographic
Representation in the Skull Controversy", Argumentation and Advocacy, Winter 2001: 133-149.
Ejournal (438060)
Fleming, David. “Can Pictures be Arguments?” Argumentation and Advocacy 33 (1996): 11-22.
* Groarke, Leo, 2007, "Four theses on Toulmin and Visual Argument", Lecture given in OSSA,
International Conference on Argumentation, June 2007.
N/A
Groarke, Leo. “Toward a Pragma-dialectics of Visual Argument.” Advances in Pragma-dialectics.
Ed. Frans H. van Eemeren. Amsterdam : Sic Sat/ Virginia : Vale Press, Newport News, 2002 : 137151.
* Joffee, Helen, "The Power of Visual Material: Persuasion, Emotion and Identification". Diogenes,
2008: 55: 84-93.
Ejournal (452832)
Kohn, Ayelet. “Comic Strip, Poem, and Journal Article: Three Models of Image/text.” Hebrew—a
Living Language, III: studies on the Language in Its Social and Cultural Contexts, Literature,
Meaning, Culture 30. Eds. Rina Ben-Shahar and Gideon Toury. Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University and
Hakibbutz Hamehuchad, 2003: 167-189. (Hebrew).
* Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen. “Front Pages: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper
Layout.”Approaches to Media Discourse. Eds. Alan Bell and Peter Garrett. Oxford/ Massachussetts:
Blackwell, 1998: 186-219.
302.23014 APP 1998 (1096099)
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* Mitchell, W.J. Thomas. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1987.
704.94 MIT i (48875) – in the Philosophy & English libraries
Mitchell, W.J. Thomas. Picture Theory. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
*Nakamura, Lisa ‘I WILL DO EVERYthing That Am Asked’: Scambaiting, Digital Show-Space,
and the Racial Violence of Social Media. Journal of Visual Culture, December 2014 13: 257274,doi:10.1177/1470412914546845
http://vcu.sagepub.com/content/13/3/257.full.pdf
Ejournal (1215173)
O’Keefe, Daniel J. “The concepts of argument and arguing.” Advances in Argumentation Theory
and Research. Eds. J.Robert Cox and Charles Arthur Willard. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1982: 3-23.
Oren, Ruth "Constructing Place : Propaganda and Utopian Space in the Landscape in Zionist
Landscape Photography, 1898-1948", Devarim Hahadim n° 2, Van Leer Institute and Hakibbutz
Hameuchad, 1997, p. 13-31.
* Oren, Ruth "Photography has taught me two things" (Beno Rothenberg, « Photographer », in
Beno Rothenberg, Photographed and reported 1947-1957, Eretz Israel Museum, Tel-Aviv, 2007, p.
13-14.
Available in Hebrew - E990.12 ‫צל תשס"ז‬.‫( רות‬1132290) – in the Judaica library (in the central
library)
* Perelman Chaim, 1982. The Realm of Rhetoric, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame,
London,. Ch. 2 “Argumentation, Speaker and Audience” pp. 9-20. [ ‫] תדפיס‬
168 PER r (14241) – in the Philosophy & English libraries
Shelley, Cameron, 1996, "Rhetorical and Demonstrative Modes of Visual Argument: Looking at
Images of Human Evolution", Argumentation and Advocacy, Fall 1996: 53-68.
Toulmin, Stephen, The Uses of Argument, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1958, pp. 94107.
* Toulmin, Stephen. E. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003
(1958).
160 TOU u (228361) – in the Philosophy library
Yanoshevsky, Galia, "The Possibility and Actuality of Image Events: Framing Image Events in the
Press and on the Internet," Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, edited by
Joseph Wilferth and Kevin DeLuca, Enculturation 6.2., 2009,
http://enculturation.gmu.edu/6.2/yanoshevsky. 25 p.
* Yanoshevsky, Galia, "Advertising and High-Risk Decision Making – Publicity as bouleusis",
Paper presented at the international conference on rhetoric (Usages et fonctions de la rhétorique.
Regards interdisciplinaires sur la raison pratique), Brussels, 16-18 May 2013.
N/A
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Yanoshevsky, Galia, "Portrait du pays en jeune état : L'encyclopédie d'Israël en images, 19501952", Reverseau, Anne (éd.), Portraits de pays illustrés, un genre photo-textuel ?, Caen, Lettres
Modernes Minard, “Lire & Voir”, 2015, 17 pages (forthcoming)
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