Global Visual Cultures is a definitive anthology that provides a new and groundbreaking perspective on the field, and addresses multiple interpretations of the visual, from considerations of the "everyday" to global political contexts. Expands the theoretical framework for considering visual culture Brings together a rich selection of readings relevant in a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary settings, from critical theory, anthropology and history, to political science, architecture, and ethnic, race and gender studies Analyzes cultural phenomena in global and local contexts and across a broad geographical and geopolitical terrain Address multiple interpretations of the visual, from considerations of the "everyday" to global political contexts Offers ample, useful pedagogy that reveals the multi-faceted nature of visual culture

Art is a multi-faceted part of human society, and often is used for more than purely aesthetic purposes. When used as a narrative on modern society, art can actively engage citizens in cultural and pedagogical discussions. Convergence of Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Global Civic Engagement is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on the relationship between popular media, art, and visual culture, analyzing how this intersection promotes global pedagogy and learning. Highlighting relevant perspectives from both international and community levels, this book is ideally designed for professionals, upper-level students, researchers, and academics interested in the role of art in global learning.

How the world—and the world of visual culture in particular—creates itself in a creative act that knows no economic return. How does the world form itself? How does it create itself as a world? And how do we understand the role of the visual in this regard? Most responses to these questions within cultural theory and visual culture refer to the rise of globalization, thus highlighting the acceleration of exchanges, the proliferation of information and communication devices, and the multiplication of globally circulated goods and images that characterize the world we live in. Visual Cultures as World Forming takes a different approach by focusing on the taking place of the world, a creative act that knows no economic return. This taking place does not lead to more proliferation of goods, additional financial exchanges, further communications, or an increase in the distribution of visual material, but leads to the continued “worlding” of the world. This approach is predominantly, but not exclusively, inspired by the work of Jean-Luc Nancy. Through a reading of his work and of some of his contemporaries both inside and outside of the Western canon, Madani and Martinon attempt to expose how the world—and the world of visual culture in particular—creates itself and the ways in which each one of us is embodying this creation without economy. Copublished with Goldsmiths, University of London

The author traces the history and theory of visual culture asking how and why visual media have become so central to contemporary everyday life. He explores a wide range of visual forms, including painting, sculpture, photography, television, cinema, virtual reality, and the Internet while addressing the subjects of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, the body, and the international media event that followed the death of Princess Diana.

National studies have demonstrated their inability to correctly understand global phenomena, and the way in which they affect societies. This chronologically ambitious book investigates methodological and theoretical issues from Roman times to the present, in terms of globalization. In this context, one of the most relevant parameters of change emerges: the itinerancy of culture and knowledge. Therefore, this volume argues that itinerant agents carry with them cultural baggage, transporting and transmitting it to other spaces. In this way, interconnection begins, producing active changes in global history and visual culture. Contributions to this book focus on comparative studies, the evolution of global phenomena, historical processes in their diachrony, regional studies, changing economies, cultural continuities, and methodological questions on globalization, among others. In addition, the book opens with a contribution from Professor Peter Burke.

What is cultural about vision--or visual about culture? In this ambitious book, Whitney Davis provides new answers to these difficult and important questions by presenting an original framework for understanding visual culture. Grounded in the theoretical traditions of art history, A General Theory of Visual Culture argues that, in a fully consolidated visual culture, artifacts and pictures have been made to be seen in a certain way; what Davis calls "visuality" is the visual perspective from which certain culturally constituted aspects of artifacts and pictures are visible to informed viewers. In this book, Davis provides a systematic analysis of visuality and describes how it comes into being as a historical form of vision. Expansive in scope, A General Theory of Visual Culture draws on art history, aesthetics, the psychology of perception, the philosophy of reference, and vision science, as well as visual-cultural studies in history, sociology, and anthropology. It provides penetrating new definitions of form, style, and iconography, and draws important and sometimes surprising conclusions (for example, that vision does not always attain to visual culture, and that visual culture is not always wholly visible). The book uses examples from a variety of cultural traditions, from prehistory to the twentieth century, to support a theory designed to apply to all human traditions of making artifacts and pictures--that is, to visual culture as a worldwide phenomenon.

As if John Berger's Ways of Seeing was re-written for the 21st century, Alexis L. Boylan crafts a guide for navigating the complexities of visual culture in this concise introduction. The visual surrounds us, some of it invited, most of it not. In this visual environment, everything we see--art, color, the moon, a skyscraper, a stop sign, a political poster, rising sea levels, a photograph of Kim Kardashian West--somehow becomes legible, normalized, accessible. How does this happen? How do we live and move in our visual environments? This volume offers a guide for navigating the complexities of visual culture, outlining strategies for thinking about what it means to look and see--and what is at stake in doing so.