Is there one visual culture or are there multiple visual cultures? On the one hand, it is obvious that images do not exist and cannot be understood independently. Rather, they are embedded in institutions and cultural contexts. This common ground suggests an understanding of visual culture as a singular phenomenon. On the other hand the plurality of pictorial representations - from Sitcoms to illustrations in childrens' books, from cartoons to satellite photos, from high art to everyday life - suggests the conception of visual culture as a singular phenomenon to be misleading. The visual world is a field of conflict and tension between self and other, mainstream and counterculture. The articles in this book include both theoretical reflections on the dialectics of visual culture(s) as well as case studies. The focus lies on examples from the U.S. American context - from the focusing on Native Americans as the 'Vanishing Race' in the 19th-century Photography to the TV coverage of the Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster in February, 2003. This book is therefore highly recommendable to both students and scholars of American Studies als well as those interested in the interdisciplinary debate on visual culture(s).

Weimar Culture Revisited is the first book to offer an accessible cross-section of new cultural history approaches to the Weimar Republic. This collection uses an interdisciplinary approach and focuses on the everyday workings of Weimar culture to explain the impact and meaning of culture for German's everyday lives during this fateful era.

This collection reconsiders the life and work of Emile Jean-Horace Vernet (1789-1863), presenting him as a crucial figure for understanding the visual culture of modernity. The book includes work by senior and emerging scholars, showing that Vernet was a multifaceted artist who moved with ease across the thresholds of genre and media to cultivate an image of himself as the embodiment of modern France. In tune with his times, skilled at using modern technologies of visual reproduction to advance his reputation, Vernet appealed to patrons from across the political spectrum and made works that nineteenth-century audiences adored. Even Baudelaire, who reviled Vernet and his art and whose judgment has played a significant role in consigning Vernet to art-historical obscurity, acknowledged that the artist was the most complete representative of his age. For those with an interest in the intersection of art and modern media, politics, imperialism, and fashion, the essays in this volume offer a rich reward.

As an archetype for an entire class of places, Main Street has become one of America's most popular and idealized images. In Main Street Revisited, the first book to place the design of small downtowns in spatial and chronological context, Richard Francaviglia finds the sources of romanticized images of this archetype, including Walt Disney's Main Street USA, in towns as diverse as Marceline, Missouri, and Fort Collins, Colorado. Francaviglia interprets Main Street both as a real place and as an expression of collective assumptions, designs, and myths; his Main Streets are treasure troves of historic patterns. Using many historical and contemporary photographs and maps for his extensive fieldwork and research, he reveals a rich regional pattern of small-town development that serves as the basis for American community design. He underscores the significance of time in the development of Main Street's distinctive personality, focuses on the importance of space in the creation of place, and concentrates on popular images that have enshrined Main Street in the collective American consciousness.

Echoing and expanding the aims of the first volume, Visualities: Perspectives on Contemporary American Indian Film and Art, this second volume contains illuminating global Indigenous visualities concerning First Nations, Aboriginal Australian, Maori, and Sami peoples. This insightful collection of essays explores how identity is created and communicated through Indigenous film-, video-, and art-making; what role these practices play in contemporary cultural revitalization; and how indigenous creators revisit media pasts and resignify dominant discourses through their work. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Visualities Two draws on American Indian studies, film studies, art history, cultural studies, visual culture studies, women’s studies, and postcolonial studies. Among the artists and media makers examined are Tasha Hubbard, Rachel Perkins, and Ehren “Bear Witness” Thomas, as well as contemporary Inuit artists and Indigenous agents of cultural production working to reimagine digital and social platforms. Films analyzed include The Exiles, Winter in the Blood, The Spirit of Annie Mae, Radiance, One Night the Moon, Bran Nue Dae, Ngati, Shimásání, and Sami Blood.

Critical study ranges from pre-Columbian times through the 20th century to explore Mexico's intrinsic association between art and religion; the role of iconography in Mexican art; and the return to native values. Unabridged reprint of the classic 1929 edition. 118 black-and-white illustrations.