The Visual Culture Reader brings together the key writings in the exciting new interdisciplinary field of visual culture. Key features of the Reader include: * a wealth of visual forms including photography, painting, sculpture, advertising, virtual reality and other electronic imaging * thematic sections, each with an introduction by the editor * sections addressing What Is Visual Culture; Visual Culture and Everyday Life; Virtuality: Virtual Bodies, Virtual Spaces; Race, Empire and After; Postcolonial Visual Cultures; Gender and Sexuality * two specially-written introductory articles, by Irit Rogoff and Ella Shohat * a stunning line-up of authors, from Roland Barthes to Donna Haraway. Taken as a whole, the essays provide a comprehensive response to the diversity of contemporary visual culture, and address the need of our modern and postmodern culture to render experience in visual form. Contributors include: Roland Barthes, Judith Butler, Anthea Callen, James Clifford, Michel de Certeau, René Descartes, Richard Dyer, John Fiske, Michel Foucault, Coco Fusco, Paul Gilroy, Donna Haraway, bell hooks, Marshall McLuhan, Lynda Nead, Griselda Pollock, Mary-Louise Pratt, Irit Rogoff, Andrew Ross, Ella Shohat and Paul Virilio.

Table of Contents:
A Visual Reader: Contents Introductions/Provocations Nicholas Mirzoeff, 'What is Visual Culture?' Irit Rogoff, 'Studying Visual Culture.' Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, 'Narrativizing Visual Culture: Towards a Polycentric Aesthetics.' 1. A Genealogy of Visual Culture: From Art to Culture Rene Descartes, 'Optics', from The Discourse on Method Martin Jay, 'The Scopic Regimes of Modernity.' Roland Barthes, 'The Rhetoric of the Image.' Griselda Pollock, 'Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity.' Carol Duncan, 'The Modern Art Museum.' James Clifford, 'On Collecting Art and Culture.' Paul Virilio, from The Vision Machine 2. Visual Culture and Everyday Life Marshall McLuhan, 'Woman in a Mirror.' Ann Reynolds, 'Visual Stories.' Michel de Certeau, from The Practice of Everyday Life. John Fiske, 'Videotech.' Marita Sturken, 'The Wall, the Screen and the Image: The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial.' 3. Virtuality: Virtual Bodies, Virtual Spaces (a) The Virtual Body Donna Haraway, 'The Persistence of Vision.' Lisa Cartwright, 'Science and the Cinema.' Susan Bordo, 'Reading the Slender Body.' Ann Balsamo, 'On the Cutting Edge: Cosmetic Surgery and the Technological Production of the Gendered Body.' (b) Virtual Spaces Michel Foucault, 'Of Other Spaces.' Jonathan Crary, from Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Anne Friedberg, from Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. Mary-Louise Pratt, from Imperial Eyes: Travel-Writing and Transculturation. Geoffrey Batchen, 'Spectres of Cyberspace.' 4. Race and Identity in Colonial and Postcolonial Culture (a) Visual Colonialism Timothy Mitchell, 'Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order.' Anne McClintock, 'Soft-Soaping Empire: Commodity Racism and Imperial Advertising.' Malek Alloula, from The Colonial Harem. Suzanne Preston Blier 'Vodun Art, Social History and the Slave Trade.' (b) Visualizing Race and Identity Paul Gilroy, 'Art of Darkness: Black Art and the Problem of Belonging to England.' Bell Hooks, 'Representing Whiteness: Seeing Wings of Desire.' Andrew Ross, 'The Gangsta and the Diva.' (c) Identity and Transculture Adrian Piper, 'Passing for White, Passing for Black.' Coco Fusco, 'The Other History of Intercultural Performance.' Nestor Garcia Canclini, 'Remaking Passports: Visual Thought in the Debate on Multiculturalism.' Oriana Baddeley, 'Engendering New Worlds: Allegories of Rape and Reconciliation.' 5. Gender and Sexuality (a) The Gaze and Sexuality Anthea Callen, 'Ideal Masculinities: An Anatomy of Power.' Tamar Garb,