Sessions 25 and 26: Iconoclasts of the Present

Flood, Finbarr Barry. 2002. Between cult and culture: Bamiyan, Islamic iconoclasm and the museum.

Muller, Marion G. and Esra Ozcan. 2007. The political iconography of Muhammad cartoons.

Starrett, Gregory. 2006. Cartoon violence and a clash of civilization.

Huyssen, Andreas. 2002. Twin memories: afterimages of nine/eleven.

Centlivres, Pierre. 2002. Life, death, and eternity of the Buddhas in Afghanistan.

Lucas, Catherine. 2002. The hidden Imam.

Frodon, Jean-Michel. 2002. The war of images, or the Bamiyan paradox.

Comments to be posted by evening of Monday, Dec. 1.

Sessions 23 and 24: Iconoclasts of the past

Bahrani, Zainab. 2003. Decoys and lures: substitution and the uncanny double of the king. In The Graven Image.

Flood, Finbarr B. 2005. Refiguring iconoclasm in the early Indian mosque. In Negating the Image.

Konchok, Pema. 2002. Buddhism as a focus of iconoclash in Asia. In Iconoclash.

Wilson, Penelope. 2005. Naming names and shifting identities in ancient Egyptian iconoclasm. In Negating the Image. 

Comments to be posted by evening of Monday, Nov. 24.

Session 22: Critique as Iconoclasm

Latour, Bruno. 2004. Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry 30(2):225-48.

Comments to be posted by evening of Nov. 17.

Sessions 20 + 21: Defacement and Refacement

Latour, Bruno. 2002. What is iconoclash? Or is there a world beyond the image wars? In Iconoclash.

Taussig, Michael. 1998. Crossing the face. In Border Fetishisms.

Comments to be posted by evening of November 12.

Sessions 18 + 19: Offending Images

Freedberg, David. 1989. Idolatry and iconoclasm. In The Power of Images.

Mitchell, W. J. Thomas. 2005. Offending images. In What Do Pictures Want?

Mitchell, W. J. Thomas. 2005. Totemism, fetishism, idolatry. In What Do Pictures Want?

Comments to be posted by evening of November 5.

Session 16: Vital Signs in Antiquity I

Freedberg, David. 1989. The god in the image. In The Power of Images, pp. 27-40.

Freedberg, David. 1989. Consecration: making images work. In The Power of Images, pp. 82-98.

Comments to be posted by evening of October 22.

Sessions 12-13: Domesticated Images, Part II

Lewis-Williams, David and David Pearce. 2005. Inside the Neolithic Mind. Thames and Hudson, London.

Comments to be posted by evening of October 15.

Sessions 11-12: Domesticated Images, Part I

Boric, Dusan. 2005. Body metamorphosis and animality: volatile bodies and boulder artworks from Lepenski Vir. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 15:35-69.

Bradley, Richard. 2001. Human, animals and the domestication of visual images. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 11(2):261-3.

Watkins, Trevor. 2004. Architecture and 'theatres of memory' in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia. In Rethinking Materiality, edited by Elizabeth DeMarrais et al., pp. 97-106.

Whittle, Alasdair. 2000. 'Very like a whale': menhirs, motifs and myths in the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Northwestern Europe. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10(2):243-59.

Comments to be posted by evening of October 8.

Lepenski Vir

What do these images mean?

What do they do?

What do they want?

Göbekli Tepe (Turkey)

What do these images mean?

What do they do?

What do they want?

Sessions 9-10: Twilight of the Idols, Part II

Lewis-Williams, David. 2002. The Mind in the Cave. Thames and Hudson.

Comments to be posted by evening of Oct 1.

Sessions 7-8: Twilight of the Idols, Part I

Bataille, George. 2005. The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture. Zone Books. (Selections)

Mithen, Steven. 1999. Symbolism and the supernatural. In The Evolution of Culture: An Interdisciplinary View, edited by Robin Dunbar, Chris Knight and Camilla Power, pp. 147-169. Rutgers University Press.

Comments to be posted by evening of Sept 24.

Sessions 4-6: On Object Agency

Gell, Afred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford University Press.

Comments to be posted by the evening of Sept. 15.

Session 3: What Do Pictures Want?

Mitchell, W. J. Thomas. 2005. Chapters 1 and 2. In What Do Pictures Want? University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Comments to be posted by the evening of Sept 8.

Archaeology of Idols

ANTH W4065  (Barnard College, Columbia University)

"Archaeology of Idols" explores 40,000 years of the human creation of, entanglement with, enchantment by, and violence toward images. Case studies roam from the Paleolithic to Petra and from the Hopi to the Taliban, all the while placing the sculpted, painted or otherwise constructed devotional objects of archaeology into dialogue with contemporary social theory on the problem of representation, iconoclash, fetishism and the sacred. Archaeological texts by David Lewis-Williams, Lynn Meskell and Zainab Bahrani are paired with writings by W. J. T. Mitchell, Alfred Gell, David Freedberg and George Bataille as part of a larger project designed to build an archaeological iconology that seeks to understand why humans have always been such prolific makers and breakers of idols. Our goal, then, is not a representative survey of human-idol relations in an particular time or place let alone in prehistory generally. Rather, our investigations make strategic and selective leaps that highlight idolatry as a basic aspect of the human experience.