An Introduction to Visual Culture

CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS VISUAL CULTURE?
Visualizing ;
Visual Power, Visual Pleasure ;
Visuality ;
Culture ;
Everyday Life ;
PART ONE: VISUALITY
1. Picture definition: Line, color, vision
Perspectives ;
Discipline and color ;
Normalizing color: color blindness ;
Light over color ;
White ;
Coda ;
2. The age of photography (1839-1982)
The death of painting ;
The birth of the democratic image ;
Death and photography ;
From photo noir to post-photography ;
The death of photography ;
3. Virtuality: From virtual antiquity to the pixel zone
Interfaces with virtuality ;
Virtuality goes global ;
Telesublime ;
Virtual Reality ;
Virtual reality and everyday life ;
Virtual identity ;
Net life ;
More pixels anyone? ;
Virtual bodies ;
PART TWO CULTURE
4. Transculture: From Kongo to the Congo
Inventing the heart of darkness ;
Resistance through ritual ;
Cultural memory ;
New visions from the Congo ;
5. Seeing Sex
Fetishizing the gaze ;
From inversion to opposites and ambiguity ;
Seeing female sex ;
mixing: the cultural politics of race and reproduction ;
Queering the gaze: Roger Casement's eyes ;
6. First contact: From Independence Day to 1492 and Millennium ;
Enter the extraterrestials ;
The return of the empire ;
Aliens as evil ;
Trekking ;
TV past and present ;
PART THREE GLOBAL/LOCAL
7. Diana's death: Gender, photography and the inauguration of global visual culture ;
Popularity and cultural studies ;
Photography and the princess ;
Pictures in India ;
The celebrity punctum ;
Flags and protocol: the devil in the detail ;
Death and the maiden: the sign of New Britain ;
Pixel planet ;
CODA FIRE ;
Index.