“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Fairest of Them All?”
– Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. “Schneewittchen” [Snow White]. Kinder- und Hausmärchen, 1st ed., tale no. 36, 1812.
This bi-weekly seminar explores how visual culture shapes ideas about gender roles. Starting from fairy tales and their visual adaptations, we will examine how these narratives continue to influence contemporary images—from illustration to video games and synthetic media.
At the center of the seminar lies a simple question: How can we retell familiar stories so that their characters gain new forms of agency?
Fairy tales have historically assigned female characters limited roles, for example, the victim, the reward, or the witch. These patterns still circulate widely in visual culture today. At the same time, new digital tools such as image generative AI models are increasingly involved in producing, distributing, and codifying such representations.
In this seminar, students will analyze these visual tropes and experiment with ways of retelling them. Illustration, visual storytelling, speculative image-making, and AI-assisted image generation will be used as tools to test how stories shift when seen from different perspectives.
Rather than focusing only on critique, the seminar approaches design as a way of thinking through images. Participants will study historical and contemporary representations of a diverse spectrum of gendered identities to develop their own visual responses. The published outcome may take different forms, from illustrated narratives and speculative scenarios to AI-co-created imagery.
The goal is to understand visual practice as a method of inquiry and empowerment—revealing assumptions embedded in images and opening space for alternative imaginaries.
– Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. “Schneewittchen” [Snow White]. Kinder- und Hausmärchen, 1st ed., tale no. 36, 1812.
This bi-weekly seminar explores how visual culture shapes ideas about gender roles. Starting from fairy tales and their visual adaptations, we will examine how these narratives continue to influence contemporary images—from illustration to video games and synthetic media.
At the center of the seminar lies a simple question: How can we retell familiar stories so that their characters gain new forms of agency?
Fairy tales have historically assigned female characters limited roles, for example, the victim, the reward, or the witch. These patterns still circulate widely in visual culture today. At the same time, new digital tools such as image generative AI models are increasingly involved in producing, distributing, and codifying such representations.
In this seminar, students will analyze these visual tropes and experiment with ways of retelling them. Illustration, visual storytelling, speculative image-making, and AI-assisted image generation will be used as tools to test how stories shift when seen from different perspectives.
Rather than focusing only on critique, the seminar approaches design as a way of thinking through images. Participants will study historical and contemporary representations of a diverse spectrum of gendered identities to develop their own visual responses. The published outcome may take different forms, from illustrated narratives and speculative scenarios to AI-co-created imagery.
The goal is to understand visual practice as a method of inquiry and empowerment—revealing assumptions embedded in images and opening space for alternative imaginaries.