How is the way we see shaped by power? How has power been shaped by vision? How does visual culture, from oil painting to AI-generated images, from public spectacles to private surveillance, reflect and reproduce power? What do we see when we attend to power in our ways of seeing? Can we challenge or resist particular ways of seeing? Can we see differently? This course will consider these questions with reference to Plato’s “allegory of the cave” and, then, in dialogue with some of the most influential thinkers of the past century: Walter Benjamin, John Berger, Guy Debord, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, bell hooks, Jacques Lacan, Joan Scott, and James C. Scott. In the final weeks of the course, we will think beyond vision and visual culture, to address a broader sensorium and its relationship to power. We will consider Theodor W. Adorno’s critique of so-called “regressive listening” in late capitalism and Wendy Brown’s more recent defense of “deep listening” to repair our democracy and our warming planet. All other discussion sections are scheduled for in-person instruction on campus. Students must register for both the lecture and discussion section of this course.