This course will examine major developments in modern and postmodern visual culture. Beginning with the late 19th century and proceeding chronologically, the course will look closely at different modes of cultural production—including art, film, and design—and will focus particular attention on influential primary texts by artists, critics, and theoreticians. In so doing, the course aims to introduce students to the dominant aesthetic debates of the past hundred years and to put those debates into broad social, philosophical, and historical context. As such, the course intends to provide students with the theoretical foundation to help them critically understand their own visual interests and activities in relation to the diverse and shifting concerns of contemporary culture.