Visual culture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Visual culture is a field of study within cultural studies focusing on aspects of culture that rely on visual images. Among cultural studies theorists working with contemporary culture, this often overlaps with film studies and the study of television, although it can also include video game studies, comics, traditional artistic media, advertising, the Internet and any other medium that has a crucial visual component.

Early work on visual culture has been done by John Berger (Ways of Seeing, 1972) and Laura Mulvey (Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1975).

Major work on visual culture has been done by W. J. T. Mitchell, particularly in his books Iconology and Picture Theory. Other writers important to visual culture include Stuart Hall and Slavoj Zizek. Continuing work has been done by Lisa Cartwright, Margarita Dikovitskaya, Chris Jencks, Nicholas Mirzoeff and Gail Finney.

Several major universities now either house or are developing graduate programs in Visual Studies. They include: Coventry University (coventry university homepage; University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Rochester; University of California, Irvine; University of California, San Diego; University of Southern California; State University of New York, Buffalo; Goldsmiths College, University of London, University of East London; Kingston University; New York University, Middlesex University; University of Art and Design Helsinki, Pori Department of Art and Media. Cornell University has been offering both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Visual Studies for the past 5 years.

[edit] Further reading (Wikipedia)

[edit] Further reading (Books)

Dikovitskaya, Margaret (2005 (cloth), 2006 (paperback)). Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the Cultural Turn, 1st ed., Cambridge, Ma: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-04224-X.

Fuery, Kelli & Patrick Fuery (2003). Visual Culture and Critical Theory, 1st ed., London: Arnold Publisher. ISBN 0340807482.

Jay, Martin (ed.), 'The State of Visual Culture Studies', themed issue of Journal of Visual Culture, vol.4, no.2, August 2005, London: Sage. ISSN 14704129. eISSN 17412994

Mirzoeff, Nicholas (1999). An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-15876-1.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas (ed.) (2002). The Visual Culture Reader, 2nd ed., London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-25222-9.

Morra, Joanne & Smith, Marquard (eds.) (2006). Visual Culture: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, 4 vols. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-41-532641-9.

Smith, Marquard, 'Visual Culture Studies: Questions of History, Theory, and Practice' in Jones, Amelia (ed.) A Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945, Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. ISBN 9781405135429

Sturken, Marita; Lisa Cartwright (2007). Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-531440-9.