Picturing Antigone

What is it that makes Antigone, Sophocles’s tragedy from the 5th century B.C.E, such a powerful vehicle for the consideration of subjectivity, ethics, and politics in the present day? In this seminar an anthropologist and a photojournalist consider Antigone’s productivity for political analysis, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and feminist studies and consider how the play has evolved into a contemporary site for the consideration of war, fascism, ethical action, gender, democracy, and colonialism in places such as Nazi-occupied Paris, the Texas-Mexico border, “dirty-war” Argentina, apartheid South Africa, Taliban-sieged Kandahar, and Covid-striken New York. This investigation draws on a wide range of materials, including literary criticism, film, and archival photographs. Throughout the semester, students also develop familiarity with photography as a medium of inquiry, in preparation for their final projects on a modern adaptation of Antigone.