In this course we will examine, analyze, contextualize, and interpret explicit and coded representations of gender, race, class, and sexual identity as manifested in art, film, exhibitions and visual culture. We will be considering issues of authorship, spectatorship (audience), and the ways in which images reflect, inscribe, amplify, deconstruct, or challenge social and political structures that pertain to gender, race, and class. We will focus on taboo-breaking modes of art-making, as they depart from traditional (binary) social and cultural conventions of representation. We employ a variety of theoretical and methodological frameworks, ranging from iconographical analysis to feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories. Grounding our discussion in an historical overview, the course examines modern and contemporary works from diverse geographical and cultural contexts, and discusses non-European and non-U.S. forms of visual expression, focusing on the Middle East, Latin American and the African Diaspora.