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"Visual communication Criticism and interpretation."
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How to see the world : an introduction to images, from self-portraits to selfies, maps to movies, and more
\"In How to See the World, visual culture expert Nicholas Mirzoeff offers a sweeping look at history's most famous images--from Velâazquez's Las Meninas to the iconic \"Blue Marble\"--to contextualize and make sense of today's visual world. Drawing on art history, sociology, semiotics, and everyday experience, he teaches us how to close read everything from astronaut selfies to Impressionist self-portraits, from Hitchcock films to videos taken by drones. Mirzoeff takes us on a journey through visual revolutions in the arts and sciences, from new mapping techniques in the seventeenth century to new painting styles in the eighteenth and the creation of film, photography, and x-rays in the nineteenth century. In today's networked world, mobile technology and social media enable us to exercise \"visual activism\"--the practice of producing and circulating images to drive political and social change. Whether we are looking at pictures showing the effects of climate change on natural and urban landscapes or an fMRI scan demonstrating neurological addiction, Mirzoeff helps us to find meaning in what we see,\"--Amazon.com.
Book
Postal Culture
The nationalization of the postal service in Italy transformed post-unification letter writing as a cultural medium. Both a harbinger of progress and an expanded, more efficient means of circulating information, the national postal service served as a bridge between the private world of personal communication and the public arena of information exchange and production of public opinion. As a growing number of people read and wrote letters, they became part of a larger community that regarded the letter not only as an important channel in the process of information exchange, but also as a necessary instrument in the education and modernization of the nation.
In Postal Culture , Gabriella Romani examines the role of the letter in Italian literature, cultural production, communication, and politics. She argues that the reading and writing of letters, along with epistolary fiction, epistolary manuals, and correspondence published in newspapers, fostered a sense of community and national identity and thus became a force for social change.
eBook
The emergence of film culture
Between the two world wars, a distinct and vibrant film culture emerged in Europe. Film festivals and schools were established; film theory and history was written that took cinema seriously as an art form; and critical writing that created the film canon flourished. This scene was decidedly transnational and creative, overcoming traditional boundaries between theory and practice, and between national and linguistic borders. This new European film culture established film as a valid form of social expression, as an art form, and as a political force to be reckoned with. By examining the extraordinarily rich and creative uses of cinema in the interwar period, we can examine the roots of film culture as we know it today.
eBook
Neo-Authoritarian Masculinity in Brazilian Crime Film
An incisive analysis of contemporary crime film in Brazil, this
book focuses on how movies in this genre represent masculinity and
how their messages connect to twenty-first-century sociopolitical
issues. Jeremy Lehnen argues that these films promote an agenda in
support of the nation's recent swing toward authoritarianism that
culminated in the 2018 election of far-right president Jair
Bolsonaro.
Lehnen examines the integral role of masculinity in several
archetypal crime films, most of which foreground urban violence,
including Cidade de Deus, Quase Dois Irmãos, Tropa de Elite, O
Homem do Ano , and O Doutrinador . Within these films,
Lehnen finds representations that criminalize the poor,
marginalized male; emasculate the civilian middle-class male
intellectual, casting him as unable to respond to crime; and
portray state security as the only power able to stem increasing
crime rates.
Drawing on insights from masculinity studies, Lehnen contends
that Brazilian crime films are ideologically charged mediums that
assert and normalize the presence of the neo-authoritarian male
within society. This book demonstrates how gendered scripts can
become widely accepted by audiences and contribute to very real
power structures beyond the sphere of cinema.
A volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture
in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and Juan
Carlos Rodríguez
Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the
Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
eBook
The French road movie
The traditionally American genre of the road movie has been explored and reconfigured in the French context since the later 1960s. Comparative in its approach, this book studies the inter-relationship between American and French culture and cinemas, and in the process considers and challenges histories of the road movie. It combines film history with film theory methodologies, analysing transformations in social, political and film-industrial contexts alongside changing perspectives on the meaning and possibilities of film. At once chronological and thematic in structure, The French Road Movie provides in each chapter a comprehensive introduction to key themes emerging from the genre in the French context – liberty, identity and citizenship, masculinity, femininity, border-crossing – followed by detailed, innovative and often revisionist readings of the chosen films. Through these readings the author justifies the place of the road genre within French cinema histories and reinvigorates this often neglected and misunderstood area of study.
eBook
Language and Terrorism: A Pragmatic and Semiotic Analysis of the Girls' Transformation in \Four Daughters\
The research investigates \"Four Daughters\" (2023) by Kaouther Ben Hania through pragmatic and semiotic analysis to study how extremist discourse transforms the linguistic and identity aspects of the girls. The research proposes that the transition from maternal openness to ideological closure occurs through intricate processes of symbolic and linguistic breakdown. Specific film sequences are examined to demonstrate how silence, body language, and spoken words function in creating this identity transformation. The analysis shows how ideological discourse transforms identity by removing doubt and openness to create absolute certainty and finality. The research incorporates Austin and Searle's speech act theory, Barthes' semiotics of imagery, and Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power in language. It demonstrates that the film presents more than just a documentation of personal crises, as it reveals a general symbolic breakdown that cinema uses to expose the discursive fractures resulting in radicalization.
Journal Article
Rebuilding Story Worlds
A collaboration between Belgian artist Francois Schuiten and French writer Benoit Peeters, The Obscure Cities is one of the few comics series to achieve massive popularity while remaining highly experimental in form and content. Set in a parallel world, full of architecturally distinctive city-states, The Obscure Cities also represents one of the most impressive pieces of world-building in any form of literature.Rebuilding Story Worlds offers the first full-length study of this seminal series, exploring both the artistic traditions from which it emerges and the innovative ways it plays with genre, gender, and urban space. Comics scholar Jan Baetens examines how Schuiten's work as an architectural designer informs the series' concerns with the preservation of historic buildings. He also includes an original interview with Peeters, which reveals how poststructuralist critical theory influenced their construction of a rhizomatic fictional world, one which has made space for fan contributions through the Alta Plana website.Synthesizing cutting-edge approaches from both literary and visual studies, Rebuilding Story Worlds will give readers a new appreciation for both the aesthetic ingenuity of The Obscure Cities and its nuanced conception of politics.
eBook
Indigiqueerness
Evolving from a conversation between Joshua Whitehead and Angie Abdou, Indigiqueerness is part dialogue, part collage, and part memoir. Beginning with memories of his childhood poetry and prose and travelling through the library of his life, Whitehead contemplates the role of theory, Indigenous language, queerness, and fantastical worlds in all his artistic pursuits. This volume is imbued with Whitehead’s energy and celebrates Indigenous writers and creators who defy expectations and transcend genres.
eBook