The Handbook of Visual Culture - by Ian Heywood & Barry Sandywell (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Visual culture has become one of the most dynamic fields of scholarship, a reflection of how the study of human culture increasingly requires distinctively visual ways of thinking and methods of analysis. Bringing together leading international scholars to assess all aspects of visual culture, the Handbook aims to provide a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the subject.

The Handbook embraces the extraordinary range of disciplines which now engage in the study of the visual - film and photography, television, fashion, visual arts, digital media, geography, philosophy, architecture, material culture, sociology, cultural studies and art history. Throughout, the Handbook is responsive to the cross-disciplinary nature of many of the key questions raised in visual culture around digitization, globalization, cyberculture, surveillance, spectacle, and the role of art.

The Handbook guides readers new to the area, as well as experienced researchers, into the topics, issues and questions that have emerged in the study of visual culture since the start of the new millennium, conveying the boldness, excitement and vitality of the subject.

Review Quotes

"A must-have guide for non-experts or students, as well as for more experienced readers in particular, because of the multidisciplinary aspects, showing that new developments and issues are constantly raising, together with new forms of questioning belonging to the most diverse fields of knowledge." --Digicult

About the Author

Ian Heywood is Visiting Research Fellow at the Lancaster Centre for Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University and author of Social Theories of Art: A Critique.

Barry Sandywell is Honorary Research Fellow in Social Theory in the Department of Sociology, University of York, UK. He is the author of, among other works, Logological Investigations and is co-editor, with Ian Heywood, of Interpreting Visual Culture: Explorations in the Hermeneutics of the Visual.

CONSULTANT EDITORS:
Michael Gardiner is Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Gunalan Nadarajan is Vice Provost for Research, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, USA.

Catherine Soussloff is Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture, Department of Art History and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz Division, USA.