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The Visual Archive

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Course objectives and organisation

Whereas the academic field of history is largely defined by its reliance on written sources, historians have always made use of images in addition to text. Visual materials including photographs, maps, diagrams, drawings, and paintings have long had their place in the field, but recent decades have witnessed a more systematic and methodologically robust approach to images, both as complements to written sources, and as objects of historical enquiry in their own right.

The overarching aim of this advanced-level course is to introduce students to the possibilities and limitations of using visual materials in historical studies, and to encourage participants to consider images as starting points in their own research activities. Thematically organised around visual genres in which the Department of Science and Ideas has particular expertise – including geographical maps, medical photography, scientific diagrams, and commercial marketing – the course will introduce students to a variety of historical visual materials, as well as to current theoretical and methodological discussions about their employment in historical research. In taking advantage of locally available collections and expertise at handling historical images, students are expected to develop a versatile toolkit for integrating historical images alongside written materials in historical research and writing, and to apply their newly acquired tools in an individually authored study.

 

Teaching and teachers

The course consists of compulsory lectures, seminars, and workshops. Information about the course structure, as well as the required readings and preparations for each meeting of the course, can be found under Modules. Please note that the information here provided, including the information about required readings, is preliminary and can be subject to change before the course start.

In the course of your studies, you will be meeting a number of specialists from the Department of History of Science and Ideas. All of them have been recruited to the course because of their expertise in a particular sub-field of the overarching thematic.

Parts of the course will be taught at the Maps and Graphics Department at the Uppsala University Library, where you will be meeting two of the Department’s specialist archivists:

The language of instruction is English, yet the teaching staff on the course can also be addressed in Swedish. Written assignments can be submitted in Swedish subject to prior approval from the responsible teacher.

 

Required readings

Details about the required readings for each course meeting are given below. Please note that the reading list is preliminary and can be subject to change before the course start.

 

Examination

Student achievements are assessed by way of written assignments, and by active participation during the seminars. Please note that attendance during all course sessions is obligatory. In the case of illness or any other emergency, please contact the teacher responsible for the session, or the course convenor.

 

Further questions?

For general questions about the course, its contents and objectives, please contact the course convenor Petter Hellström at petter.hellstrom@idehist.uu.se

For specific questions about a particular course module, including the required readings, please contact the teacher in charge of that session (as specified in the course schedule and under Modules).

For questions about admission or any other query of an administrative character, please contact the course administrator Anna-Lotta Jadinge at annalotta.jadinge@idehist.uu.se or info@idehist.uu.se

 

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Course Structure and Required Readings

Please note that the reading list is preliminary and can be subject to change before the course start.

 

Opening Session: Images as Objects of Historical Enquiry (Petter Hellström)

Required readings

  • Burke, Peter, Eyewitnessing. The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London, 2001), pp. 9–19 (“Introduction”). Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Edwards, Elizabeth, Photographs and the Practice of History. A Short Primer (London, 2022), pp. 1–15 (“Introduction”). Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Elkins, James, How to Use Your Eyes (London & New York, 2009/2000), pp. ix–xiii (“Preface”). Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Manghani, Sunil, Image Studies. Theory and Practice (London & New York, 2012), pp. xxi–xxix (“Introduction”). Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Rose, Gillian, Visual Methodologies. An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials (London, 2016/2001), pp. 1–23 (“Introduction”).
  • Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking. An Introduction to Visual Culture (New York & Oxford, 2009/2001), pp. 1–8 (“Introduction”).

Further readings (recommended but not required)

  • Baigrie, Brian S., Picturing Knowledge. Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996). Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Daston, Lorraine and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007).
  • Jones, Caroline A. and Peter Galison (eds), Picturing Science, Producing Art (New York: Routledge, 1998).
  • Stafford, Barbara Maria, Good Looking. Essays on the Virtue of Images (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
  • Anything by W. J. T. Mitchell, including The Language of Images (Chicago, 1980); Iconology. Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago, 1986); Picture Theory (Chicago, 1994); What Do Pictures Want? (Chicago, 2005); and Image Science (Chicago, 2015).

Online image depositories

  • Alvin – the Swedish-Norwegian platform for digital collections and digitised cultural heritage, based at Uppsala University Library (Images, Maps, and other relevant categories are in the right-hand menu).
  • Gallica – the French platform for digitised collections, based at the French National Library (scroll down for Images, Maps, and other relevant categories).
  • The Digital Collections of the New York Public Library.

 

Visit to the Uppsala University Library (Per Widén)

More information will be provided during the first course meeting.

 

Session 1: Cartographic Images (Petter Hellström)

Required readings

  • Harley, John Brian, “New England Cartography and the Native Americans.” In idem, The New Nature of Maps. Essays in the History of Cartography, ed. Paul Laxton (Baltimore & London, 2001), pp. 169–195. (The entire volume is recommended.)
  • Ojala, Carl-Gösta and Jonas Monié Nordin, “Mapping Land and People in the North. Early Modern Colonial Expansion, Exploitation, and Knowledge.” Scandinavian Studies 91, no 1–2 (2019), pp. 98–133. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Raj, Kapil, “Circulation and the Emergence of Modern Mapping.” In idem, Relocating Modern Science. Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 60–94.

Additional resources

 

Visit to the Uppsala University Library (Mats Höglund)

More information will be provided during the first course meeting.

 

Session 2: Botanical Images (Anna Svensson)

Required readings

  • Ogilvie, Brian W., “A Science of Describing.” In idem, The Science of Describing. Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago, 2006), pp. 139–208. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Secord, Anne, “Botany on a Plate. Pleasure and the Power of Pictures in Promoting Early Nineteenth-Century Scientific Knowledge.” Isis 93, no. 1 (2002), pp. 28–57. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.

Further readings (recommended but not required)

  • Bleichmar, Daniela, Visible Empire. Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (Chicago, 2012), ch. 2.
  • Charmantier, Isabelle, “Carl Linnaeus and the Visual Representation of Nature.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 41, no 4 (2011), pp. 365–404. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Daston, Lorraine and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York, 2007), ch. 2.

 

Session 3: Scientific Images (Petter Hellström)

Required readings

  • Ginzburg, Carlo, "Family Resemblances and Family Trees. Two Cognitive Metaphors." Critical Inquiry 30 (2004), pp. 537–556. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Sera-Shriar, Efram, “Constructing the ‘Jewish Type.’ Anthropometric Measurement, Composite Photography, and Anthropology in the Late Victorian Age.” Nuncius 36 (2021), pp. 532–567. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Åhrén, Eva, "Figuring Things Out. Visualizations in the Work of Swedish Anatomists Anders and Gustaf Retzius, 1829–1921." Nuncius 32 (2017), pp. 166–211. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.

Further readings (recommended but not required)

  • Daston, Lorraine and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York, 2007).
  • Jones, Caroline A. and Peter Galison (eds.), Picturing Science, Producing Art (New York, 1998).
  • Latour, Bruno, “Visualization and Cognition. Thinking with Eyes and Hands.” Knowledge and Society. Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present 6 (1986), pp. 1–40. The essay is available in different formats, sometimes under the title “Drawing Things Together.”
  • Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright, “Scientific Looking, Looking at Science.” In idem, Practices of Looking. An Introduction to Visual Culture (New York & Oxford, 2009/2001), pp. 347–87.

 

Session 4: Statistical Images (Frans Lundgren)

Required readings

  • Charles, Loic and Yann Giraud, “Economics for the Masses. The Visual Display of Economic Knowledge in the United States (1921–1945),” History of Political Economy 45 (2013), pp. 567–612. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Neurath, Otto, From Hieroglyphics to Isotype. A Visual Autobiography (London: Hyphen Press, 2010), pp. 99–127.
  • Neurath, Otto, “Visual Education. Humanisation versus Popularization.” In idem, Empiricism and Sociology (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973), pp. 227–248 (part of chapter 7). Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.

 

Session 5: Digital Images (Matts Lindström)

In this seminar, we will use the literature as a point of departure for discussing themes ranging from the specific nature and materiality of digital images to how they can be analyzed and approached in research. Some of the questions posed will be: What is a digital image? How does it operate and function? How has the introduction of digital media, algorithms and the digitisation of our visual culture changed what an image is? And more generally: how can we relate the different articles and chapters, what are the common themes, threads and divergences to consider (if any)?

Required readings

  • Edwards, Elizabeth, “Digital.” In idem, Photographs and the Practice of History. A Short Primer (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 112–127. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.Library.
  • Hoelz, Ingrid and Rémi Marie, Softimage. Towards a New Theory of the Digital Image (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2015), 1–8 (introduction), 61–80 (ch. 4) and 81–110 (ch. 5). Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Manovich, Lev, “AI Image and Generative Media. Notes on Ongoing Revolution.” In Lev Manovich and Emanuele Arielli, Artificial Aesthetics: Generative AI, Art, and Visual Media (2023), 17 pp. Available online at http://manovich.net/content/04-projects/167-artificial-aesthetics-book/manovich-ai-image-and-generative-media.pdf
  • Wevers, Melvin and Thomas Smits, “The Visual Digital Turn. Using Neural Networks to Study Historical Images,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 35, no 1 (2020), 194–207. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.

 

Session 6: Medical Images (Solveig Jülich)

Required readings

  • Curtis, Scott, “Photography and Medical Observation.” In The Educated Eye: Visual Culture and Pedagogy in the Life Sciences, edited by Nancy Anderson and Michael R. Dietrich (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2012), pp. 68–93. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Edwards, Elizabeth, “Materiality.” In idem, Photographs and the Practice of History: A Short Primer (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), pp. 97–110. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Engelmann, Lukas, “Picturing the Unusual: Uncertainty in the Historiography of Medical Photography,” Social History of Medicine 34, no. 2 (2021), pp. 375–98. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Jülich, Solveig, “The Drama of the Fetoplacental Unit: Reimagining the Public Fetus of Lennart Nilsson.” In Rethinking the Public Fetus: Historical Perspectives on the Visual Culture of Pregnancy, edited by Elisabet Björklund and Solveig Jülich (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2024), pp. 143–70. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.

Further readings and viewings (recommended but not required)

 

Session 7: News Images (Solveig Jülich)

Required readings

  • Bair, Nadya, “The Decisive Network: Producing Henri Cartier-Bresson at Mid-Century,” History of Photography 40, no. 2 (2016), pp. 146–166. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Bair, Nadya, “Photo Essays at LIFE.” In LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography, edited by Katherine A. Bussard and Kristen Gresh (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum, 2020), pp. 128–63. Available online at https://www.academia.edu/42787320/Photo_Essays_at_LIFE
  • Edwards, Elizabeth, “Context.” In idem, Photographs and the Practice of History: A Short Primer (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), pp. 83–95. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Gervais, Thierry, “Representing News with Photographs: A Visual Economy.” In The Handbook of Photography Studies, edited by Gil Pasternak (London & New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 476–92. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Hevia, James L., “The Photography Complex: Exposing Boxer-Era China (1900–1901), Making Civilization.” In Photographies East: The Camera and Its Histories in East and Southeast Asia, edited by Rosalind C. Morris (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 79–119. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.

Further readings and resources (recommended but not required)

  • Bair, Nadya, The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2020).
  • Gervais, Terry, The Making of Visual News: A History of Photography in the Press (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).
  • Hill, Jason E. and Vanessa R. Schwartz (eds), Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).
  • Kihlberg, Jakob, “Synoptic Images: Truth and Temporality in Pictorial Journalism During the 1840s,” Victorian Literature and Culture 51, no. 2 (2023), pp. 199–232. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.
  • Life, 1936–1972 (archival resource). Available online at https://books.google.se/books?id=N0EEAAAAMBAJ&dq=Life&hl=sv&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1&atm_aiy=1936#all_issues_anchor
  • Ny illustrerad tidning, 1865–1900 (archival resource). Available online at http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-461983
  • Wilson, Beth E., “The Corporate Creation of the Photojournalist: Life Magazine and Margaret Bourke-White in World War II,” Journal of War and Culture Studies 9, no. 2 (2016), pp. 133–150. Digitally available through the Uppsala University Library.

 

Closing Session: Opening the Visual Archive (Petter Hellström)

More information will be provided during the first course meeting.

 

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