This course coincides with and utilizes the exhibition "Persian Visions: Contemporary Photography from Iran" which takes place between October 2007 and January 2008 at the UMMA's off-site gallery. We take modern and contemporary visual culture of Iran and its diasporas as a point of departure to examine the meaning of rebellion in and through art. This course seeks to explore the ways in which the makers and consumers of art have questioned, contested, subverted and negotiated visual and cultural "norms." What are those norms and how are they defined, naturalized, enforced? What artistic strategies are deployed to decentralize dominant paradigms, be they the force of tradition or of the 'foreign' (farangi)? What are the mechanisms for the visual production of a rebellious relationship with the established norms of sexuality, gender, race, or religious and political ideologies? We also investigate these contested arenas of visuality in relation to the emergence of modernisms outside Europe and the U.S. Comparative studies of the visual enterprise of modernity in places such as Iraq, Egypt and Pakistan will help us navigate the cultural tensions and artistic negotiations between tradition and invention, between rebellion and conformity, between the institutional and the individual. Although the medium of photography will take center stage, we will examine a wide range of genres of visual representation- painting and sculpture, public monuments and architecture, film and video, and such small media as posters, stamps and banknotes. There are no prerequisites for this course. Estimated cost of materials: $50 or more, but less than $100. I. 4