Cartoon Journalism, Pictures and Images in Popular Geopolitics
The purpose of this assignment is to encourage you to consider how different artistic media may relate to political geography, and to write both an interpretation piece and a contribution piece on the popular geopolitics that relate to cartoon journalism and other artistic materials. You have all had some experience of this in your reflections on the Vietnam: Artists at War exhibition. In this exercise you are encouraged to critically examine examples of cartoon journalism focusing on geopolitical contexts, such as Israel-Palestine, particularly the life of Palestinian people, or the journey of a group of French medics through 1980s Afghanistan. Other materials will also be available for you to discuss, if you prefer, such as a film using clay figurines and raw film footage to focus on the day to day life in Democratic Kampuchea, under the Khmer Rouge regime.
Part 1
Interpretation (1000 – 1500 words):
Your task is to write an interpretation piece that links the work(s) of specific artists, cartoon and photo-journalists, and creative use of such material for films that relate to particular geopolitical eras and / or contexts.
The materials will be introduced to you in the lecture notes, one focusing on Israel-Palestine and the work of Joe Sacco, as well as on Afghanistan and the work of three collaborators (Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre, and Frédéric Lemercier). The second part introduces work in relation to the Khmer Rouge period of Cambodia, focusing on three artists (Bunheang Ung, cartoonist; Vann Nath, painter; and Rithy Panh’s filmmaker, focus on The Missing Picture).
Your interpretation piece (try to keep within 1000 – 1500 words) should focus on answering the following questions:
- Why are visual materials useful for us to understand and interpret past geopolitical landscapes and events?
- Why may such materials enable us to have insights into everyday political geographical stories of ordinary people?
- Why is it important to understand the methods and aims of the artists when interpreting their work and the contexts they address?
Your interpretation may draw upon different selected materials; or you may choose to focus on a specific context, or artist, or piece of work. This is your interpretation and your choice.
You may also bring in materials from the same artist from other sources. That choice is yours to make.
To help with the interpretation exercise, please refer to Readings in the file marked Cartoon Journalism, Photographs and Popular Geopolitics. As these are scanned at home on a simple scanner, some may appear upside down, and pages are not perfectly aligned. Apologies for this.
The second part of this exercise asks you to make a contribution.
Based on your own research online, you are to choose a different example or examples of artistic work, photojournalism or cartoon journalism that focus on themes relevant to the study of political geography.
Your choices may relate to the examples in the interpretation or be very different from those.
You should write 1000 words explaining why you make this choice, and your analysis of the particular significance of the work to political geography.
Some questions for you to consider are: Why is the chosen example of relevance to the study of political geography? Explain the context and significance. What do you learn from this? Why do you think this contribution is relevant to the study of political geography? Please note that these are guiding questions to help you compose your contribution, but it is not compulsory you answer each question.
To repeat, your contribution may focus on the same artist (e.g. Joe Sacco or Rithy Panh) as in the interpretation, or the same case (e.g. Palestine or Cambodia), or they may focus on any political geography case where you find relevant materials. The materials you choose could be cartoon journalism, political cartoons and satirical cartoons, or political animation works, or
inventive use of materials (as in The Missing Picture), or even sculptures. The case studies are also your choice. This is your contribution.
All selected materials should be referenced properly (titles, authors, artists, online address, plus other relevant information). References are excluded from the final word count.
