University Teaching of Image Study

Workshops of visual Culture and Seminars of contemporary artistic visuality

Abstract

The text develops the proposal of educational innovation that concerns the «Workshops of Visual Culture» and the «Seminars of contemporary artistic visuality» that are presented as collaborative and complementary activities in the teaching of the subject of «Analysis and interpretation of the image» at the University of Valencia since the academic year 2009-2010. The experience of university teaching in a basic training module, focused on the study of the image has allowed us to implement these organizational modalities as optimal to achieve the skills that have been defined in the teaching/learning process of first year students of the degrees of History and History of Art at the University of Valencia. The purpose of the activities is aimed at introducing students, recently incorporated into the university environment, to the consideration of the image as a document of the History of Culture. The methodological parameters of both activities are developed within the theoretical framework of the iconographic-iconological method and its theoretical and practical application. Through these collaborative and complementary activities, students are provided with concrete examples of analysis and interpretation of the image, which come from different artistic contexts. Attendance to the workshops and seminars results in autonomous learning that provides good academic results since it was implemented as an organizational modality of university teaching in the degrees of History and History of Art.