This book addresses the function and status of the visual and verbal image as it relates to social, political, and ideological issues. The authors first articulate some of the lost connections between image and ideology, then locate their argument within the modernist/postmodernist debates. The book addresses the multiple, trans-disciplinary problems arising from the ways cultures, authors, and texts mobilize particular images in order to confront, conceal, work through, or resolve contradictory ideological conditions.

This book addresses the function and status of the visual and verbal image as it relates to social, political, and ideological issues. The authors first articulate some of the lost connections between image and ideology, then locate their argument within the modernist/postmodernist debates. The book addresses the multiple, trans-disciplinary problems arising from the ways cultures, authors, and texts mobilize particular images in order to confront, conceal, work through, or resolve contradictory ideological conditions.

This book provides a critical analysis of the debate between modernists and postmodernists through an analysis of the work of Jurgen Habermas, focusing on the role that he has played in this debate. The author offers an alternative to the dichotomy between modernism and postmodernism by developing the conception of "the aftermath of modernity" which takes seriously postmodern critiques of modernism while keeping intact certain key enlightenment ideals.

W.J.T. Mitchell – one of the founders of visual studies – has been at the forefront of many disciplines such as iconology, art history and media studies. His concept of the pictorial turn is known worldwide for having set new philosophical paradigms in dealing with our vernacular visual world. This book will help both students and seasoned scholars to understand key terms in visual studies – pictorial turn, metapictures, literary iconology, image/text, biopictures or living pictures, among many others – while systematically presenting the work of Mitchell as one of the discipline's founders and most prominent figures. As a special feature, the book includes three comprehensive, authoritative and theoretically relevant interviews with Mitchell that focus on different stages of development of visual studies and critical iconology.

What constitutes a villain? How does villainy differ from evil? Do villains created for children's fiction differ from those created for adults? The villains considered in this volume come from an eclectic range of sources - from comic books to film and from novels to television serials - and a broad selection of times and places. Villains continue to raise troubling questions about the role of narrative in both fiction and real life.

The Spoken Image considers the nature of photography, examining the language used in titles, captions and commentaries, particularly as they relate to documentary photography, photojournalism and fashion photography.

What precisely, W. J. T. Mitchell asks, are pictures (and theories of pictures) doing now, in the late twentieth century, when the power of the visual is said to be greater than ever before, and the "pictorial turn" supplants the "linguistic turn" in the study of culture? This book by one of America's leading theorists of visual representation offers a rich account of the interplay between the visible and the readable across culture, from literature to visual art to the mass media.