Book Description

Visual Culture Studies presents 13 engaging and detailed interviews with some of the most influential intellectuals working today on the objects, subjects, media and environments of visual culture. Exploring historical and theoretical questions of vision, the visual and visuality, this collection reveals the provocative insights of these thinkers as they have contributed in exhilarating ways to disturbing the parameters of more traditional areas of study across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In so doing they have key roles in establishing Visual Culture Studies as a significant field of inquiry. Each interview draws out the interests and commitments of the interviewee to critically interrogate the past, present and future possibilities of Visual Culture Studies and visual culture itself. The discussions concentrate on three broad areas of deliberation: The intellectual and institutional status of Visual Culture Studies. The histories, genealogies and archaeologies of visual culture and its study. The diverse ways in which the experiences of vision, and the visual, can be articulated and mobilized to political, aesthetic and ethical ends. This book demonstrates the intellectual significance of Visual Culture Studies, and the ongoing importance of the study of the visual. Marquard Smith is Reader in Visual and Material Culture at Kingston University, London, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Visual Culture.