UAB College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Art and Art History students enrolled in the 2015 spring “Special Topics: Photography in the South” course spent a semester researching and creating projects that consider the taking, making, printing, presenting and critiquing of photographic images, particularly those made in and about the South. 

Taught by DAAH Visual Media and Outreach Coordinator Jared Ragland, the class read foundational texts on regional identity and Southern history and was assigned several long-term photographic projects. Students were challenged to develop and articulate their personal voice and photographic vision through the making of photographs within the contexts of personal identities, historical antecedents, contemporary practices and strategies of critical interpretation, Ragland says.