Studies in Visual Culture Main Menu Table of contents Title page Part II: Essays and Research Creation About the authors Credits

Part I: How to Look at ...

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Scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Visual Culture posit that seeing is always a cultural, not biological act; they ask us to think critically about all of the things that pass through our fields of vision, and to consider the forms of disciplinary knowledge that inform how we look. One of the discipline's founders, James Elkins, in How to Use Your Eyes, makes the persuasive case for a practice of close seeing that integrates the personal with academic modes. He selects a range of ordinary non-symbolic items to explore such as a culvert, an xray, and crackeling on oil paint, and then takes readers into deeper consideration of the item as well as the discursive frames that contain it.   

Here, the authors of this volume were asked to extend Elkins' work, showing us the world through their eyes.

Leah Cassidy, in "How to Look at a Conure," examines more-than-human relations, showing how to look at birds and how they see us. She shows how her green conure, a type of small Central/South American parrot, is able to communicate with a glance or puff of the feathers.

Emiliano Gonzalez Carranza, in "How to Look at a Movie Theatre," thinks about what has happened to movie theatres since the pandemic shutdown, asking are theatres necessary? Or are they an outdated cultural practice that we hold on to out of a romantic notion of visiting “the movies”? Why bother caring about something so seemingly endangered? What are the essential elements of a movie theatre/cinema/the movies? Taking readers through actual theatre spaces, he shows what we might be missing. 

Reyanne Punsalan, in "How to Look at Cremation," examines different culture's approaches to and renderings of cremation -- Balinese and Hindu traditions, the Western esoteric tradition, and ancient Greek. She writes "To look at cremation closely is to notice the paradoxes it embodies: destruction and rebirth, fear and awakening. These paradoxes remind us that destruction is not merely an ending."

And finally, Emma Sutcliffe, in "How to Look at a Tattoo," invites a reexamination of the art form, thinking about the materiality but also its symbolism: "A tattoo bridges a gap we’d never think to take notice of. They allow us to look just beneath ourselves, an act only somewhat comparable to looking at the web of veins under our skin."



Click here for Part II, which features longer form essays. 

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