This course engages students with major conceptual, ideological, cultural and historical issues that have impacted and defined photography from 1839 to the present. Over the course of the semester, students will develop their abilities to discuss and identify the major developments within this history with perceptiveness and confidence. This course emphasizes the socio-political forces, technological developments, and aesthetic innovations that have determined the trends of photographic theory and production, across its brief history and with an emphasis on global issues and impacts. From photography’s emergence out of scientific invention and practice to its current ubiquity, this course looks at photography’s role in establishing modern identity. Further, this course examines the way conceptual photography interrogates photography’s role, establishing a new critical identity. Just as crucial to this course is photography’s role as a medium of critique, and where its practitioners fall within this complex framework.