CRIM 3563 Visual Criminology, Chris McCormick, 2nd term 2024-25, MWF 12.30-1.30, mmh203    weblog  gradesheet   project ideas   index

Calendar Description: "This course is a pantheonic study of how visuals are used in research, media, evidentiarism, teaching, and artistic representations of crime. Visual technologies are used to study forensic evidence, examine photographs for identification and images for content, and to record criminal events. The course re/collects visual data for analysis using teaching technologies to create a critical reflection on lived experience."

Course Description: This course is a pantheonic study of how visuals (photos, videos, graphics) are used in research (measurement), media (photojournalism), evidentiary (forensics, identification) materials, judicial (courtroom), teaching (presentation), and the artistic representation of crime. Visual technologies used in criminology include: documents examined using textual/ graphic analysis, (court records, news accounts); images examined for latent/manifest content, (sexism, hate messages); evidence gathered for forensic purposes (fingerprints, photo identification); and, records of events relating to crime and criminal justice, (documenting social protest). The objective is to collect together: a) the various ways criminologists have developed visual approaches; and to parallel them to, b) visual techniques used by photojournalists, and c) police/state. Topics to be covered include the: a) use of visuals in early criminal identification (criminal anthropology, somatyping); b) development of visuals in policing (fingerprints, surveillance), and their introduction in court; c) role of modern journalism (documentaries, newscasts, court tv); and, d) criminological techniques (video/ethnographic). Course text: Visual Criminology, J. Wheeldon, Routledge, 2022

Preamble: When the train sold tickets geography was transformed from an experience to be traversed into a commodity which could be bought and sold, and from (active) experience to (passively experienced) scenery. Similarly, photography transformed the (place of) crime into the crime scene (for the judiciary) and a spectacle (for the public). The immediacy of crime and its adjudication when the coroner’s jury was called to evaluate the deodand and its harm (in the premodern era), was transformed into an object of abstracted speculation and investigation (for the modern era), and voyeurism (for the late modern era). However, the visual has reformed investigation at the same time as its putative objectivity has tainted justice. From the fingerprint and dna match to the photo lineup and surveillance photo the visual has proved to be an uneasy assistant, yet one worthy of practical investigation and theoretical analysis. This unique course constitutes a new analytic direction in criminology and justice studies through the re/collection of historical and contemporary work on/in visuals.