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Visual Literacy

Edited by James Elkins

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About the Book

What does it mean to be visually literate? Does it mean different things in the arts and the sciences? Or in the developed West and in Asia or in developing nations? If we all need to become 'visually literate,' what does that mean in practical terms?

This groundbreaking collection brings together the work of major visual studies critics including W.J.T. Mitchell, Barbara Stafford, Jonathan Crary, and James Elkins to explore what impact the new concept of 'visual literacy' will have on the traditional field of art history.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Concept of Visual Literacy, and its Limitations 1. Visual Literacy 2. The Remaining 10%: The Role of Sensory Knowledge in the Age of the Self-Organizing Brain 3. Nineteenth-Century Visual Incapacities 4. From Visual Literacy to Image Competence 5. The Visual Complex: Mapping Some Interdisciplinary Dimensions of Visual Literacy 6. Visual Literacy in North American Secondary Schools 7. Philosophical Bases for Visual Multiculturalism at the College Level 8. Bridging the Gap Between Clinical and Patient-Provided Images 9. Visual Literacy in Action: Law in the Age of Images 10. The Image as Cultural Technology. Afterword: Christopher Crouch

About the Author(s)

James Elkins is E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of Pictures and Tears, How to Use Your Eyes, and What Painting Is and, most recently, The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art and Master Narratives and Their Discontents, all published by Routledge.