Visual Culture

Level 3

Literature
Sturken, Marita & Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking. An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford University Press,
2001
S.Hall (ed.) Representation, London, Sage, 1997
Articles and optional readings (on shelf in library)
Optional readings (on shelf in library)

Aim
In this course you will learn to analyse and interpret the increasing visualisation of contemporary culture. You will
develop specific visual and verbal skills for observing, analysing, describing and critiquing (audio)visual imagery from a
range of diverse theoretical perspectives.

Content
In the course you will learn about the following aspects of visual culture:

the myth of photographic truth

the influence of ideology on representation
how the spectator looks at images
how the convention of realism depends on technological developments
the interconnection between popular culture and mass-media
how consumer society reproduces desire
how constructions of gender construct visual culture
the postmodern aesthetics of pastiche and simulation
about the interaction of humans and machines (the cyborg)
what entails the globalisation of visual culture, in terms of both multiculturalism and ‘branding’
the visualisation of fashion

Structure
For each class you are asked to read a chapter (or two) from Practices of Looking and/or Representation (which are both
very accessible), and one (or two) theoretical article (which you may find more challenging). Don’t get discouraged
reading difficult texts, but try and come to terms with complex ideas. Please bring your questions to class; together we
will make sense of complicated theories. Also, you are requested for each class to bring a sample of an image that you
think illustrates the theory you have read. This may be any kind of image: photo, video, or computer image. In class we
will discuss those images together so as to make theories more concrete and practical.
Assignments have to be handed in before class on max. 1 A4, typed and printed.

Tips on how to tackle difficult texts:

After reading the article once, take note of the concepts and / or foreign terms that you do not understand. Read a second
time following the advice below:
Look up for words you don’t know in dictionaries and/or encyclopaedias
Summarise the text’s main argument in one sentence
Make a list of what, in your opinion, are the main characteristics of the text and explain why
Think about the elements that, in your opinion, constitute the cornerstone of Visual Culture
Try and discover the inter-textual references present in the text
Identify issues in the text with which you don’t agree and explain why
Choose one aspect you are particularly interested in within the field of Visual Culture and prepare a list of questions
relating to this aspect
Think whether you can come up with any material (from the field of journalism, digital media etc.) that has any relation at
all with what you are reading, which are the similarities?
Consider carefully the style, tone and rhythm of some sentences that attract your attention take note of them and explain
why they stand out from the rest of the text

Above all be proactive, creative, critical and open minded: try and establish connections among the diverse issues you
come across and make explicit the reasons on which your evaluations are based. In matters of culture there are no easy
answers, but that is no reason to stop asking questions!

Hand in final assignment (17/1/04)

For your final assignment, please choose any of the topics discussed in the Programme making use, whenever appropriate,
of the articles you have read in class and of the Selected Bibliography below. You are obliged to use at least one
theoretical perspective that has been discussed in class and apply it to an example of visual culture that you analyse.
Dutch students are advised to write in Dutch; should you wish to write in English, please consult the instructor in
advance.
Advice as for writing good essays is available, for Dutch speakers ‘de ACW-schrijfwijzer’;
for English speakers at ‘How to write good essays’:
http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/index.html
and MLA Essay writing Guidelines:
http://www.rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/mla.html

The final paper should be:

Between 3000-4000 words (excluding bibliography, notes, and appendices); longer papers will not be accepted
Typed, printed, double spaced with enough margin for comments; two copies (one for archive)
For essays returned 1-2 days after deadline 1 mark is detracted, from 3 to 5 days delay, 2 marks are detracted, essays
handed in 5 days after deadline are no longer accepted. Extensions are granted only after authorization by teachers and
only for serious reasons
If you return the essay late, you won’t be able to rewrite if it is unsuccessful
If your essay has been returned on time, but it is insufficient, then you can rewrite it and return it by the first teaching day
in period 4 (11/4). Same rules as above apply for late essays
In case the essay that you have rewritten is still unsuccessful, then you will be required to attend the course again next
year

Syllabus
10/11 1. What is Visual Culture?
The aim of this session is to think about the notion of Visual Culture: What is it? How does it differ from art history and
cultural studies?
Literature: please read from Practices of Looking:
Introduction
Ch 1, ‘Images, Power, and Politics’
Ch 2, ‘Viewers Make Meaning’

Assignment: Please bring to class an image that you find very striking, disturbing or moving. In class we will ask students
to comment on their choice. The image may be taken from any medium: a picture, fashion photo, advertisement,
videoclip, movie, television or website. Make sure your image can be immediately and easily shown in class; all the
equipment is available.
Film Screening: none

12/11 No Session. Afternoon trip to the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival (DEAF) in Rotterdam. Web Site http://deaf.v2.nl/

17/11 2. Gaze
This class examines how power and desire work in visual culture, from the perspective of psychoanalysis.
Literature: please read and study:
Practices of Looking: Ch 3, ‘Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge’
S. Freud, from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, New York: Basic Books, 1905: 22-23
S. Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams, New York: Avon Books, 1965 (1900): 289-292 and 294-299
Freud, ‘Female sexuality’ (1931) pp. 194-208 (laatste deel niet!)
J. Lacan, ‘The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience’ Écrits. A
Selection, New York: Norton, 1977 (1949): 1-7
Optional reading: P. Adams ‘Father Can’t You See I’m Filming? in T. Brennan & M. Jay (eds.) Vision in Context, pp. 203-
217 (refers to film Peeping Tom)

Assignment: Take an example from visual culture and apply psychoanalysis by concentrating on perspective: who looks,
who is being looked at, how is identification produced, can you recognise oedipal desire, etc.? Because of the number of
pages to read, you don’t have to write this assignment up or hand it in. Bring your image to class. In class we will ask
students to present their case.

Film Screening (in the morning): Peeping Tom, Michael Powell, GB 1960

19/11 3. Sign
This class deals with the question ‘what is a sign?’ from a semiotic perspective.
Literature: please read and study:
Practices of Looking: Ch 4, ‘Reproduction and Visual Technologies’,
Ch 5, pp. 138-144 (on semiotics)
Stuart Hall, Representation, pp.30-41 and Reading C and D by R. Barthes, pp.68-9

Assignment: Do Activity 6 and the one connected to Reading D in Representation, pp. 40-41

24/11 4. Photography and the Multiplying Image

This class deals with the question how technology has changed the nature of representation.
Literature: please read and study:
Practices of Looking: Ch 5, ‘The Mass Media and the Public Sphere’
Walter Benjamin, (1935) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, reprinted in: Benjamin,
Illuminations, New York: Schocken Books, 1968: 217-251
(optional) M. Jay ‘Photo-unrealism: the contribution of the Camera to the Crisis of Ocularcentrism’ in S. Melville & B.
Readings (eds.) Vision & Textuality, Duke UP, 1995, pp. 344-360
(optional) Susan Sontag, On Photography, London, Penguin pp. 167-180

Assignment: choose one from the following:

Refer to S. Hall, Representation, pp.81-87 and bring to class two photographs, one which reflects documentary as
objective representation and another that reflects documentary as subjective interpretation
Bring to class an image that is mechanically reproduced or digitally manipulated. Analyse how the technological process
changes the nature of the visual representation.
Film Screening (in the morning): The Man with the Movie Camera (1929, Sovjet Union: Dziga Vertov)

26/11 5. Visualising Gender

This class looks at the notion of gender, in other words at cultural constructions of femininity and masculinity.
Literature: please read and study:
Practices of Looking: Ch 6, ‘Consumer Culture and the Manufacturing of Desire’
S. Hall, ‘Exhibiting Masculinity’, pp. 291-322
L. Mulvey (1975), ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’. In R. Stam & T. Miller, Film and Theory, an Anthology.
Oxford: Blackwell, 2000: 483-494

Assignment, please choose on of the following:

Do Activity 7 and 8 in S.Hall, Representation, pp.52-54 and Reading F, pp.71-74
Do Activity on p.319 related to Reading A, pp.331-333 in S. Hall Representation

1/12 6. Visual Culture and Everyday Life

This class discusses how postmodernism is mostly a culture of pastiche and simulation.
Literature: please read and study:
Practices of Looking: Ch 7, ‘Postmodernism and Popular Culture’
Jean Baudrillard, Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983: pp. 1-13.

Assignment: Please bring to class an image that is clearly a pastiche of another image and analyse, in writing, how the
pastiche works: irony, parody, repetition, simulation?
Film Screening (in the morning): eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1999)
This film also fits in to the next class on Friday!

3/12 7. The Cyborg

This class considers how the figure of the cyborg (a cybernetic organism) informs contemporary visual culture.
Literature: please read and study:
Practices of Looking: Ch 8, ‘Scientific Looking, Looking at Science’
D. Haraway, ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the1980s’ (1985) in Haraway,
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. London, Free Association Books, 1991: 149-181.
Available online at: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html

Assignment: Please bring to class an image of a cyborg. Determine whether you find this image liberating or not. You
might find useful to visit the ‘History of the Cyborg’ web page at
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/technoculture/cyborgy/

8/12 8. Visualising Race

This class assesses the effects of globalisation on popular culture, from the perspective of race and ethnicity.
Literature: please read and study:
Practices of Looking: Ch 9, The Global Flow of Visual Culture’
Stuart Hall, ‘Contesting a racialized regime of representation’, in Representation. London: Sage, 1997: 269-277

Assignment: Do Activity 12 in S. Hall, Representation, p. 275

Film Screening (in the morning): Métisse (Mathieu Kassovitz, Frankrijk, 19??)

Extra: hand in one page with the subject of your final paper, including your name; title; short description of the problem
or question you want to research; hypothesis; a few lines on theoretical background; proposed methodology; and short
bibliography.

10/12 9. Visual Power: Surveillance Culture

In this session we will address the positive and negative aspects connected to the use of video cameras.
Literature: please read and study:
J. Fiske, ‘Videotech’ in N. Mirzoeff, The Visual Culture Reader, pp. 153-163
Foucault, M. ‘Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish at
http://foucault.info/documents/disciplineAndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html
Explore the Panopticism web site at http://zeke.tzo.com/panopticism/panoptic.html

Assignment: choose one from the following:

Rent and view The Matrix. Before and while watching the movie, think through the following prompts:
Locate specific instances in the film where Foucault’s theory of panopticism plays an influential role. Think about how
particular characters relate to Foucault’s essay. Describe the roles that different characters play. While writing his essay,
Foucault most likely had types of people in mind: Who performs the surveillance? Who is being watched? Who,
therefore, possesses the power and authority? What do they do with that power and authority? Think about the power
structures in the film. Who has power? Why? How did they get it? How did they keep it? Who wants power? How do they
plan to get it? Do they get it? What will they do with it if they have it? Explain, in writing, the connections you can make
between Foucault’s notion of panopticism and The Matrix.
2) Research the Rodney King Incident by visiting the web sites below. Try and answer the following questions: what are
the main reasons, to your mind, why this incident had such a huge impact on American public opinion? What is the role
that video technology played in highlighting racial tensions in American society? Try and explain what J. Fiske means
when he says: ‘Technology may determine what is shown, but society determines what is seen’ in N. Mirzoeff, The Visual
Culture Reader, p. 156. Report, in writing, your findings to the class:

The Rodney King incident: click on the ‘Introduction’ video at http://www.leldf.org/king_qt.html

Read more at http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/rodney_king_anniversary010303.html
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lapd/Kingkeyfigures.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~gregmeyer/articles/king1pg3.html
‘From Rodney King to Clinton, Video Images Help Galvanize Public Opinion’
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,40763,00.html
‘The Video Tape that Marked History’ at http://www.seeingisbelieving.ca/handicam/king/
View excerpt from the R. King Video at http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lapd/kingvideo.html
(click on ‘George Holliday Video of King Beating’)

15/12 10. (No) logo

This class assesses the effects of globalisation on popular culture, from the perspective of branding; it also evaluates
whether the logo is a visual image.
Literature: please read and study:
Naomi Klein, Ch 2, ‘The Brand Expands’, from No Logo, London: Flamingo, 2001: 27-61

Assignment: Please wear clothes with a logo. Analyse who made this piece and where; how did this piece of clothing
travel across the world; you may also want to reflect on the relationship between branding and fashion design. Try and
establish a connection between your own reflections and today’s readings. Write a 1 page report with your conclusions
and expect to share your findings with the whole class.

17/12 11. Fashion I

We will discuss visuality in relation to fashion.
Literature: please read and study:
Bruzzi & Church Gibson, Fashion Cultures. Theories, explanations, and
analysis. Routledge, 2000, extracts
Brydon, & Niessen, Consuming Fashion, Berg: 1998 extracts

Assignment: choose one of the following:

1) Please bring one of your own designs (or favourite designers) to class and prepare an oral presentation in which you
bring one or two theoretical points to bear on that particular example of fashion.
2) From http://projects.powerhousemuseum.com/hsc/paperbark/
Read Sections ‘Lenore Dembski’, ‘History of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders textiles’, and do the following
Activity:
Discuss the cross-cultural use of textile production techniques
Identify the advantages of study tours in another country included in the section ‘Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres
Strait islander textiles’

22/12 12. Fashion II

Literature: please read and study:
Rebecca Arnold, ‘Fashion’, in Fiona Carson & Claire Pajaczkowska, Feminist Visual Culture, London: Routledge, 2001,
pp. 207-220

Film Screening: none

Instead, teachers will receive students individually (10 minutes each) to discuss progress of final paper.

24/12 No class

17/1 Hand in final assignment by 17.00 hours

Selected Bibliography (by subject, in alphabetical order)

Fashion

Arnold, R. ‘Fashion’, in Fiona Carson & Claire Pajaczkowska, Feminist Visual Culture, London: Routledge, 2001:
207-220
 Breward, Christopher, Fashion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003
Bruzzi & Church Gibson, Fashion Cultures. Theories, explanations, and analysis. Routledge, 2000
Brydon, & Niessen, Consuming Fashion, Berg: 1998
Castle, Helen, Fashion, Bognor Regis: Wiley, 2000
Cawthrone, Nigel, Key Moments in Fashion. London: Hamlyn, 1998
Kunzle, D. Fashion and Fetishism, Rowman and Littlefield, 1982
C.Lury, The Logos of The Global Economy, Routledge, 2004
Reina Lewis ‘Looking Good: The Lesbian Gaze and Fashion Imagery’ pp.463-477
Morley, Jacqueline, Fashion, Hove: Macdonald Young Books, 1999

Gender

Brod, H. ‘Masculinity as Masquerade’ in A. Perchuch, H. Posner eds., The Masculine Masquerade:Masculinity and
Representation, MIT Press, 1995
Butler, J. Gender Trouble, London, Routledge, 1990
Butler, J. Bodies that Matter, London, Routledge, 1993
De Lauretis T. Technologies of Gender, Indiana UP, 1987
Doane, M. A. The Desire to Desire, Indiana UP, 1987
Epstein, J. ‘Either/Or- Neither/Both: Sexual Ambiguity and the Ideology of Gender’ Genders, 7, Spring 1990, 99-
143
Fiske, J. Media Matters:Race and Gender in US Politics, Minnesota UP, 1996
Foucault, M. A History of Sexuality, vol.1, Vintage, 1980
Freud, S. ‘Fetishism’, Sigmund Freud Collected Papers, vol. V, Basic, 1959
Fuss, D. Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, Routledge, 1991
Gever, Martha , John Greyson & Pratibha Parmar (eds), Queer Looks. Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Film and
Video. London:
Routledge, 1993
Haraway, D. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, Routledge, 1991
bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics, South End Press, 1990
bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies, Routledge, 1996
Horne, P. Lewis R. Outlooks: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities and Visual Cultures, Routledge, 1996
McClintock, A. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context, Routledge, 1995
McLuhan, M. ‘Woman in the Mirror’ from The Mechanical Bride, Beacon, 1951
Mulvey, L. Visual and Other Pleasures, Indiana UP, 1989
Rose, J. Sexuality in the Field of Vision, Verso, 1986
Smelik, Anneke, ‘Feminist Film Theory’ in Pam Cook & Mieke Bernink (eds), The Cinema Book. 2nd Edition.
British Film Institute, 1999: 353-362. To be downloaded from:
http://www.let.uu.nl/womens_studies/anneke/filmtheory.html
Trinh T. Min-ha, Woman, Native, Other, Indiana UP, 1989

Multiculturalism

Canclini, N.G. ‘Remaking Passports: Visual Thought in the Debate on Multiculturalism, in N. Mirzoeff, The Visual
Culture Reader, pp.372-382
Pratt, M.L. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, Routledge, 1992
Said, E. Orientalism, Vintage, 1978
Shohat, E. & R. Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism. Multiculturalism and the Media. London: Routledge, 1994
Williams, Patrick & Laura Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. A Reader. New York:
ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1994

Photography

Barthes, `The Photographic Message’ in Image, Music, Text, London: Fontana, 1977.
Barthes, R. (1993) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. R. Howard, London: Vintage (1980)
V. Burgin, Thinking Photography,
Crimp, D. (1980) ‘On the Photographic Activity of Postmodernism’, October, 15, Winter
Jay, M. ‘Photounrealism: The Contribution of the Camera to the Crisis of Ocularcentrism’ in S. Galassi, P. Before
 Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography, exh. cat. NY: MoMA, 1981
Hammond, J.L. (1981) The Camera Obscura: A Chronicle, Bristol
Krauss, R. (1982) ‘Photography’s Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View’, Art Journal, Winter, pp. 311319
Lister, M. (1995) The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, Routledge
Lury, Celia, Prosthetic Culture: Photography, Memory and Identity, London, Routledge, 1998
Mitchell, W.J.T. (1992) The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era, Petro, Patrice ed.
Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video, Bloomington, Indiana UP, 1995
Pinney, C. (1992) ‘The Parallel Histories of Anthropology and Photography’ in E. Edwards, ed., Anthropology and
Photography
18601920, New Haven: Yale UP
Price, M. The Photograph: A Strange, Confined Space CUP
Scharf, A. (1974) Art and Photography
Sontag Susan, On Photography, London, Penguin, 1979
Szasz, F. M. and Bogardus, R. F. ‘The Camera and the American Social Conscience: The Documentary
Photography of Jacob A. Riis’, New York History, 55, Oct. 1974, 40936
Wartofsky, M. W. (1980) ‘Cameras Can’t See: Representation, Photography and Human Vision’, Afterimage, 7, 9.
Wells, L. (1996) Photography: A Critical Introduction, Routledge

Postmodernism

Brooker, Peter & Will Brooker (eds), Postmodern After-Images. A Reader in Film, Television and Video. London:
Arnold, 1997
Docherty, Thomas (ed), Postmodernism. A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993
David Downing and Susan Bazargan (eds.) Image and Ideology in Modern/Postmodern Discourse (Albany: SUNY
Press, 1991),
Timothy Erwin, `Modern Iconology, Postmodern Iconologies’ in David Downing and Susan Bazargan (eds.) Image
and Ideology in Modern/Postmodern Discourse (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991)
Friedberg A. Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern, U of California Press, 1993
David Harvey, ‘Modernity and Modernism’ and ‘Postmodernism’
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism Verso, 1991; 2 sections from Chapter 1
available online at http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm
Levin, D. M. (1988) The Opening of Vision: Nihilism and the Postmodern Situation, New York
McRobbie A. Postmodernism and Popular Culture, Routledge, 1994
M. Sarup, T. Raja eds. Identity Culture and the Postmodern World 1996
Sim, Stuart (ed.), The Icon Critical Dictionary of Postmodern Thought, Cambridge: Icon Books, 1998
Smelik, Anneke, ‘Carrousel der seksen; gender benders in videoclips. In: R. Braidotti (red.) Een beeld van een
vrouw.De visualisering van het vrouwelijke in een postmoderne cultuur.Kampen: Kok Agora, 1993: 19-49. To be
downloaded: Nederlandse versie: http://www.deamerikaan.nl/amerikaan/html/contributions.jsp?
diarynumber=2908&number=9137
To be downloaded: English version (article on gender bending in videoclips)
http://www.deamerikaan.nl/amerikaan/html/contributions.jsp?diarynumber=2908&number=9149
Woods, Tim, Beginning Postmodernism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999

Reading Images: Psychoanalytic Approaches

Baudry, Jean-Louis, ‘The Apparatus: Metaphysical Approaches to Ideology’ in Mast, Cohen en Braudy (eds), Film
Theory and Criticism. Introductory Readings, OxfordUniversity Press, 1992: 690-707. (1974)
Baudry, Jean-Louis, ‘Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus’, in Mast, Cohen & Braudy (eds),
Film Theory and Criticism. Introductory Readings, OxfordUniversity Press, 1992: 302-312. (1974)
Freud, Fragment from The Interpretation of Dreams, New York: Avon Books, 1965 (1900): 289-292 and 294-299.
Freud, Fragment in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, New York: Basic Books, 1905: 22-23
Freud, ‘Over de vrouwelijke seksualiteit’ (1931) in Klinische beschouwingen 3, Boom: Meppel, 125-145
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan (Stanford University Press, 1991)
Malcolm Bowie, Lacan (London: Fontana, 1991), especially chapters 2 & 4
Jacques Lacan, `The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I’, in Écrits (London: Routledge, 1989).
Creed, Barbara ‘Film and Psychoanalysis’, in: John Hill & Pamela Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998: 77-90.
 Jacques Lacan, `The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious’, in Écrits
(London: Routledge, 1989).
Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (Penguin, 1979)
Laplanche, Jean & Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, ‘Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality’in Burgin, Donald & Kaplan (eds)
in Formations of Fantasy, London: Methuen, 1986: 5-34.
Laplanche, J. & J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis. New York: Norton, 1973.
Christian Metz, Psychoanalysis and Cinema (London, Macmillan, 1982)
Slavoj Zizek, `Che Vuoi?’ in The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989).
Slavoj Zizek, `The Ideological Sinthome’ in Looking Awry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991); and `Why Does a
Letter Always Arrive at Its Destination?’ in Enjoy Your Symptom! (London: Routledge, 1992).
Smelik, Anneke, And the Mirror Cracked. Feminist Cinema and Film Theory. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan
Press, 1998 (Palgrave, 2001)
Stam, Robert, Burgoyne, Robert & Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy, New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics. Structuralism,
Post-structuralism and Beyond. London & New York: Routledge, 1992.
White, Rob, ‘Psychoanalysis’ in: Pam Cook & Mieke Bernink (eds), The Cinema Book. 2nd Edition.London:
British Film Institute, 1999: 341-352.

Representing Race

Fanon, F. Black Skin, White Masks, Grove, 1967

Fiske, J. Media Matters:Race and Gender in US Politics, Minnesota UP, 1996
Gilroy, P. The Black Atlantic, Harvard UP, 1993
Golden, T. ed. Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, Abrams, 1994
Goldberg, David Theo, Racist Culture
bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics, South End Press, 1990
bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies, Routledge, 1996
bell hooks, ‘Representing Whiteness: Seeing Wings of Desire’ in N. Mirzoeff, The Visual Culture Reader, pp.338-
344, 1998
McClintock, A. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context, Routledge, 1995
Mitchell, Tim ‘Orientalism and the Visionary Order’ in N.Dirks ed. Colonialism and Culture, U of Michigan Press,
1992
Shawn Michelle Smith, ‘Photographing the ‘American Negro’ ‘
Pieterse, J. N. White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture, Yale, 1992
Piper, A. ‘Passing for White, Passing for Black’ in J. Frueh, C.L.Langer, A.Raven eds. New Feminist Criticism,
Icon Editions, 1992
Read A. The Fact of Blackness, Bay Press, 1996
Ware, V. Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History, Verso, 1992
Young, R.J.L. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, Routledge, 1995

Reading Images: Semiotic Approaches

Jacques Aumont, The Image (London: British Film Institute, 1997)

Roland Barthes, `Rhetoric of the Image’ in Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana, 1977).
Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (London: Routledge,
1996)
Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Indiana University Press, 1996).
Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, `Semiotics and Art History’ Art Bulletin 73 (1991)
Hawkes, Terence, Structuralism & Semiotics, London, Routledge, 1983
Rabate, Jean Michel ed. Writing the Image after Roland Barthes, Philadelphia U. of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
Stam, Robert (et al) et al, New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics. Structuralism, Post-structuralism and
Beyond, London: Routledge, 1992

Surveillance Culture

Paul Dandeker, C. (1990) Surveillance, Power and Modernity, Cambridge

Donna Haraway, ‘The Persistence of Vision’
Foucault, M. ‘Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish at
 http://foucault.info/documents/disciplineAndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html
Foucault M. Web Resources at http://www3.baylor.edu/~Matt_Brigham/foucaultpage.html
and
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Philosophy/Philosophers/F/Foucault,_Michel/Online_Texts_and_Interviews/
Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 19721977, ed. C. Gordon, trans.
C. Gordon et al (New York) (‘The Question of Geogra​phy’, ‘The Eye of Power’)
Foucault, M. (1984) The Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow (New York) (‘Space, Knowl​edge, Power’)
Foucault, M. (1986) ‘Of Other Spaces’, Diacritics, 16, pp. 2227. VTC VC1
Lyon, D. (1994) The Electronic Eye: The Rise of the Surveillance Society, Cambridge: Polity
Surveillance and Society electronic journal available at http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/journalv1i3.htm
‘Surveillance Camera Players’ Web Site at http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html
Virilio, ‘Candid Camera’

Visuality & New Media

D. Bell, An Introduction to Cyberculture, London, Routledge

Comolli, JL. (1980) ‘Machines of the Visible’ in T. de Lauretis and S. Heath (eds), The Cinematic Apparatus, New
York, St Martin’s Press, pp. 12142.
The Cybercultures Reader, Routledge
Doezema, M. ‘The Clean Machine: Technology in American Magazine Illustration’, Journal of American Culture,
11, Winter 1988, pp. 7392.
A. Darley ed. Visual Digital Culture, London, Routledge, 2000
T. Druckrey ed. Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation, NY, Aperture 1996
Feldman, T. An Introduction to Digital Media, London, Routledge, 1997
Hershman, L. (ed.) Clicking In: Hot Links to Digital Culture
Lovejoy, M. Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media
Lunenfeld, P. Snap-to-Grid: A User’s Guide to Digital Arts, Media, and Cultures
Manovich, L.The Language of New Media, MIT Press, 2001
M.Morse, Virtualities
Moser, M.A. (ed.) Immersed in Technology
Rush, M. New Media in Late 20th-Century Art D. Trend ed. Reading Digital Culture, London, Blackwell 2001

Visual Culture (general)

Arnheim, R., Visual Thinking

John Berger, Ways of Seeing (BBC and Penguin, 1972),
Block, editors of, The Block Reader in Visual Culture, london & NY, Routledge, 1996
Boorstin, D. The Image (New York: Vintage, 1992).
Bryson, N. et al. Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation
Bryson, N. (1983) Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan
Bryson, N. et al. Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations
BuckMorss, S. (1989) The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades
Burgin, V.(1996) In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture
Carey, W. ‘Walter Benjamin, Marshall McLuhan and the Emergence of Visual Society’, Prospects,
Crary, J. ‘Modernizing Vision’ in Foster ed. Vision and Visuality
Cooke, L. and Wollen, P. Visual Display (Bay Press, 1995)
Daniels, S. Fields of Vision Polity Press
Debord, G. The Society of the Spectacle
James Elkins, The Domain of Images
James Elkins, On Pictures and the Words that Fail Them (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
James Elkins, Why are Our Pictures Puzzles? (New York: Routledge, 1999).
James Elkins, Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction, Routledge, 2003
Evans, Jessica & Stuart Hall (eds), Visual Culture. The Reader, London: Sage, 1999
Ewen, S. (1988) All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture, NY: Basic Books
Foster, H. (ed.) (1988) Vision and Visuality, Seattle: Bay Press
Freedberg, D. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response, Chicago & London, University
of Chicago
Press, 1989
Fyfe, G. and Law, J. (eds) (1988) Picturing Power: Visual Depictions and Social Rela​tions, London: Routledge
Heywood, I. & B. Sandywell, Interpreting Visual Culture. Explorations in the Hermeneutics of the Visual
Howells, Richard, Visual Culture, Cambridge: Polity, 2003
Jay, M. ‘Scopic Regimes of Modernity’, in Foster ed. Vision and Visuality
Jay, M. Downcast Eyes, The Denigration of Vision in twentieth Century French Thought, Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1993
Jameson, F. Signatures of the Visible
Jenks, C. Visual Culture, London & NY, Routledge, 1995
Levin, D. M. (ed.) Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, Los Angeles: University of California Press
Levin, D.M. (ed.) Sites of Vision: The Discursive Construction of Sight in the History of Philosophy, Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT, 1997
Marling, K. A. As Seen on TV: the Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s, Cambridge UP, 1994
Melville, S. and Readings, B.(1995) eds Visions ond Textuality
Mirzoeff, N. The Visual Culture Reader
Mirzoeff, N. An Introduction to Visual Culture
W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago University Press, 1994),
Mitchell, W. I. T., Iconology
Mitchell, W.J.T. ‘What is Visual Culture?’ Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views from the Outside, I. Lavin ed.,
PrincetonNJ, institute for Advanced Study, 1995
Nichols, B. Ideology and the Image (IndianaUniversity Press, 1981
Nochlin, L. The Politics of Vision
Orvell, M., After the Machine: Visual Art and the Erasing of Cultural Boundaries (University Press of Mississippi)
Panofsky, E. Meaning in the Visual Arts, Garden City, Doubleday, 1955 VC1 VTC
Panofsky, E. Perspective as Symbolic Form VC1
Panofsky, Erwin (1939) Studies in Iconology, New York: OUP
Pollock, G. (1988) Vision and Difference
Schneider, J. (1980) ‘Picturing Vision’, Critical Inquiry, 6, Spring, 499526.
Silverman, K. The Threshold of the Visible World
Tagg, J. The Burden of Representation
Taylor, L. (ed) Visualizing Theory, Routledge
Rajchman, J. (1988) ‘Foucault’s Art of Seeing’, October, 44, Spring, 89117
Rose, J. Sexuality in the Field of Vision, London, Verso, 1986
Shapiro, M. Words and Pictures: On the Literal and the Symbolic in the Illustration of a Text, The Hague & Paris,
Mouton, 1973
Smelik, Anneke, Zwemmen in het asfalt. Het behagen in de visuele cultuur. Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, 2003:
http://www.let.kun.nl/acw/smelik (in English: Diving in asphalt. Pleasure in visual culture. In Fashion, Design and
Strategy, Yearbook nr 12, Hogeschool van de Kunsten Arnhem, 2004: pp 25-32)
Sturken M. & L. Cartwright, Practices of Looking: an Introduction to Visual Culture
Virilio, P. (1988) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Electronic Reproduction’, Block, 14, 47
Virilio, P. (1994) The Vision Machine (Indiana/BFI)
Walker J.A. and Chaplin S. Visual Culture: An Introduction
Wartofsky, M. W. (1981) ‘Sight, Symbol and Society: Toward a History of Visual Perception’, Philosophic
Exchange, 3, 2338.
Wartofsky, M. W. (1984) ‘The Paradox of Painting: Pictorial Representation and the Dimensionality of Visual
Space’, Social Research, 51, 4 (Winter 1984), 86383).
Williams, Linda (ed.) (1994) Viewing Positions, Rutgers