Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Ten years after the last edition, this thoroughly revised and updated third edition of The Visual Culture Reader highlights the transformed and expanded nature of globalized visual cultures. It assembles key new writings, visual essays and specially commissioned articles, emphasizing the intersections of the Web 2.0, digital cultures, globalization, visual arts and media, and the visualizations of war. The volume attests to the maturity and exciting development of this cutting-edge field.

Fully illustrated throughout, The Reader features an introductory section tracing the development of what editor Nicholas Mirzoeff calls "critical visuality studies." It develops into thematic sections, each prefaced by an introduction by the editor, with an emphasis on global coverage. Each thematic section includes suggestions for further reading. Thematic sections include:

Expansions War and Violence Attention and Visualizing Economy Bodies and Minds Histories and Memories (Post/De/Neo)Colonial Visualities Media and Mediations

Taken as a whole, thesenbsp;47 essays provide a vital introduction to the diversity of contemporary visual culture studies and a key resource for research and teaching in the field.

Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Morana Alac, Malek Alloula, Ariella Azoulay, Zainab Bahrani, Jonathan L. Beller,Suzanne Preston Blier, Lisa Cartwright, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Beth Coleman, Teddy Cruz, René Descartes, Faisal Devji, Henry Drewal, Okwui Enwezor, Frantz Fanon, Allen Feldman, Mark Fisher, Finbarr Barry Flood, Anne Friedberg, Alex Galloway, Faye Ginsburg, Derek Gregory, J. Jack Halberstam, Donna Haraway, Brian Holmes, Amelia Jones, Georgina Kleege, Sarat Maharaj, Brian Massumi, Carol Mavor, Tara McPherson, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Timothy Mitchell, W. J. T. Mitchell, Naeem Mohaiemen, Fred Moten, Lisa Nakamura, Trevor Paglen, Lisa Parks, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Jacques Rancière, Andrew Ross, Terence E. Smith, Marita Sturken, Paolo Virno, Eyal Weizman

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of figures (p. xi)
• Notes on contributors (p. xvii)
• Acknowledgements (p. xxv)
• Introduction: For Critical Visuality Studies (p. xxix)
• Part 1 Expansions (p. 1)
• 1 There are no Visual Media (p. 7)
• 2 The (In) Human Spatial Condition: A Visual Essay (p. 15)
• 3 Mapping Non-Conformity: Post-Bubble Urban Strategies (p. 32)
• 4 X-Reality: Interview with the Virtual Cannibal (p. 49)
• 5 On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge (p. 65)
• 6 Notes on the Photographic Image (p. 86)
• 7 Queer Faces: Photography and Subcultural Lives (p. 96)
• 8 Currents of Worldmaking in Contemporary Art (p. 109)
• 9 Sublimated with Mineral Fury: Prelim Notes on Sounding Pandemonium Asia (p. 118)
• 10 The Sea and the Land: Biopower and Visuality from Slavery to Katrina (p. 133)
• Further reading (p. 148)
• Part 2 Globalization, war and visual economy (p. 149)
• a War and violence (p. 149)
• 11 The Archaeology of Violence: The King's Head (p. 153)
• 12 On the Actuarial Gaze: From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (p. 163)
• 13 American Military Imaginaries and Iraqi Cities (p. 181)
• 14 Zeroing In: Overheard Imagery, Infrastructure Ruins, and Datalands in Afghanistan and Iraq (p. 196)
• 15 What Greg Roberts Saw: Visuality, Intelligibility, and Sovereignty - 36,000km over the Equator (p. 207)
• 16 Media and Martyrdom (p. 220)
• 17 Live True Life or Die Trying (p. 233)
• Further reading (p. 244)
• b Attention and visualizing economy (p. 245)
• 18 Kino-I, Kino-World: Notes on the Cinematic Mode of Production (p. 249)
• 19 On Virtuosity (p. 271)
• 20 Faking Globalization (p. 282)
• 21 Creativity and the Problem of Free Labor (p. 296)
• 22 It's Easier to Imagine the End of the World than the End of Capitalism (p. 307)
• 23 Do it Yourself Geo-Politics (p. 313)
• Further reading (p. 327)
• Part 3 The body, coloniality and visuality (p. 329)
• a Bodies and minds (p. 329)
• 24 Optics (p. 333)
• 25 Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eye Witness Account (p. 338)
• 26 Reduplicative Desires (p. 347)
• 27 The Persistence of Vision (p. 356)
• 28 The Body and/in Representation (p. 363)
• 29 Forever Modern: Mami Wata Visual Culture and History in Africa (p. 384)
• Further reading (p. 398)
• b Histories and memories (p. 399)
• 30 The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze in Modernity: Flâneur/Flâneuse (p. 403)
• 31 Tourism and "Sacred Ground": The Space of Ground Zero (p. 412)
• 32 Maps, Mother/Goddesses, and Martyroom in Modern India (p. 428)
• 33 Museums in Late Democracies (p. 455)
• 34 The Fact of Blackness (p. 463)
• 35 The Case of Blackness (p. 466)
• Further reading (p. 495)
• c (Post/De/Neo)colonial visualities (p. 497)
• 36 Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order (p. 501)
• 37 From the Colonial Harem (p. 510)
• 38 Vodun Art, Social History and the Slave Trade (p. 516)
• 39 Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm and the Museum (p. 521)
• 40 The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a State of Permanent Transition (p. 552)
• 41 Urban Warfare: Walking Through Walls (p. 570)
• Further reading (p. 585)
• Part 4 Media and mediations (p. 587)
• 42 U.S. Operating Systems at Midcentury: The Intertwining of Race and Unix (p. 591)
• 43 Rethinking the Digital Age (p. 605)
• 44 The Unworkable Interface (p. 619)
• 45 On the Superiority of the Analog (p. 637)
• 46 Digital Racial Formations and Networked Images of the Body (p. 644)
• 47 Imagination, Multimodality and Embodied Interaction: A Discussion of Sound and Movement in two Cases of Laboratory and Clinical Magnetic Resonance Imaging (p. 655)
• Further reading (p. 674)
• Index (p. 675)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The first edition of this volume, published in 1998, helped to define the interdisciplinary field of visual culture studies. In this considerably enlarged and almost entirely revised third edition, Mirzoeff (communication, New York Univ.) demonstrates the need to expand this field in response to changing conditions of visuality. To that end, he has assembled 47 essays, all of high quality, and divided them into four parts--"Expansions," "Globalization, War, and Visual Economy," "The Body, Coloniality, and Visuality," and "Media and Mediations." Although the volume retains foundational essays by Descartes, Donna Haraway, and Jonathan Beller, among others, it represents a significant expansion of critical visuality studies across disciplinary and geographic boundaries. The volume also includes photo-essays that bridge the gap between practice and theory, and Mirzoeff alludes to a website (not yet available through Routledge) that will include additional web-based analyses. Mirzoeff's introduction to the first collection, his short introductions to each part, and his lists of recommended further reading masterfully tie together a body of material characterized by incredible range and diversity. This volume is required reading for anyone interested in media studies or visual culture. It brings critical visuality studies up to the moment and introduces new directions for future work. Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. A. M. Laflen Marist College