2007 Handbooks

This unit introduces issues and debates about how we shape, and are shaped by, different forms of visual culture such as film, television, painting, photography, performance art, the built environment, and information technology. Our critical approach includes analysis of image making; what makes particular images meaningful and important for us. We look at the role of visual culture in everyday life and the ways in which visual cultures have shaped our notions of the body, and most recently of virtuality and globalisation. Issues such as the role of visual cultures in (re)producing ideas about race, identity, sexuality and gender will also be explored. The unit introduces students to a variety of critical concepts and theories which can be used in the analysis of visual texts, an increasingly important skill in an age characterised by the 'tendency to picture or visualise existence' (Mirzoeff, 1998: 6).