Publication Type
Book Chapter
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
1-2017
Abstract
International Relations is in the midst of a ‘visual turn’, because images play an increasingly important role in shaping international political events and our understanding of them. 'Visual International Politics’, a final- year undergraduate course at the London School of Economics, is unique because students don’t just study and critique visual media – they make their own films. The course thus has con ceptual and practical objectives and so employs pedagogies of meta- cognition and experiential learning in order to achieve those. At a conceptual level, students learn how to use a range of theoret ical and methodological approaches to interpret photographs, films and other visual media. The course also has practical objectives: it is the only International Relations course that provides practice- based training in documentary filmmaking. Students thus learn to ‘think visually’ by interpreting images and making films, and there is a demonstrable, mutual benefit to both their textual and visual practices as a result. In 2015– 16, for example, students’ ten- minute documentary films addressed such diverse topics as the global politics of beards (‘Beard Goggles’), a behind- the- scenes look at London’s Russian elite (‘Bliny vs. Scones’), and a political ethnography of London’s nighttime econ omy and its workers (‘The Night Bus’). Visual International Politics is part of the wider ‘Students as Producers’ initiative at LSE, which aims to deliver improvements to learning outcomes by diversifying assessment and recognising students as co- creators and co- producers of knowledge. The course receives enthusiastic feedback from students, who value it both for its uniquely critical approach and for providing valuable transferable skills.
Discipline
Higher Education | Political Science
Research Areas
Political Science
Publication
A Connected Curriculum for Higher Education
Editor
Dilly Fung
First Page
114
Last Page
115
ISBN
9781911576334
Publisher
UCL Press
City or Country
London
Citation
CALLAHAN, William A.. (2017). Visual international politics at London School of Economics. In A Connected Curriculum for Higher Education (pp. 114-115). London: UCL Press.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4368
Copyright Owner and License
Authors-NC
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/354/oa_monograph/book/81342/pdf