Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction"Visual studies is a rapidly expanding intellectual field, growing throughout colleges and universities around the world. But is it asking the most interesting questions? And is it just too easy to do? In his latest book, James Elkins offers a road map through the field of visual studies, describing its major concerns and its principal theoretical sources. Then, with the skill and insight that have marked his successful books on art and visuality, Elkins takes the reader down a side road where visual studies can become a more interesting place. Why look only at the same handful of theorists? Why exclude from one's field of vision non-Western art or the wealth of scientific images? The centerpiece of Visual Studies is Elkins's proposal for ten ways in which visual studies could be made more difficult - theoretically, practically, and in terms of its interpretative and historical range. As Stories of Art offered an antidote to the authorized version of art history, Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction proposes a refreshingly open-minded introduction to a growing field. This handsome volume is illustrated throughout." http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0651/2003013585-d.html. |
Contents
What Is Visual Studies? | 1 |
The Subjects of Visual Studies | 31 |
Ten Ways to Make Visual Studies More Difficult | 61 |
What Is Visual Literacy? | 121 |
Envoi | 193 |
Notes | 199 |
Sources and permissions | 219 |
Index | 223 |
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Abelam Aby Warburg Adorno advertising anthropology Arcades Project argument art history Art History Department Benjamin C. P. Snow Calvin Klein Cambridge Center century concepts contemporary criticism critique cultural studies diagram disciplinary disciplines discourses essay example field Film Studies Foucault gender graduate high and low high/low historians history and visual History to Visual humanities idea images interdisciplinarity interest interpretation Introduction to Visual Journal kind of visual Lacan London look low art Magoo meaning Media Studies methodologies Mirzoeff Mitchell modernism Moxey multicultural non-Western nonvisual optic painting philosophy Photo photographs Plate politics popular postcolonial postmodern problem question quotation Routledge Sandywell scholars scholarship semiotics sense Slavoj Žižek social Tags television texts theory tion University Press viewers vision Visual Anthropology visual competence visual culture Visual Culture Questionnaire visual culture studies visual literacy visual practices visual studies visually literate Walter Benjamin Western writing York