Visual culture is a field of study within cultural studies focusing on aspects of culture that rely on visual images. Among cultural studies theorists working with contemporary culture, this often overlaps with film studies and the study of television, although it can also include video game studies, comics, traditional artistic media, advertising, and any other medium that has a crucial visual component.

Early work on visual culture has been done by John Berger (Ways of Seeing, 1972) and Laura Mulvey (Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1975).

Major work on visual culture has been done by W. J. T. Mitchell, particularly in his books Iconology and Picture Theory. Other writers important to visual culture include Stuart Hall and Slavoj Zizek.

Several major universities now either house or are developing graduate programs in Visual Studies. They include: University of Rochester; University of California, Irvine; University of California, San Diego; University of Southern California; State University of New York, Buffalo.

Further reading

• Art history
• Media theory
• Visual anthropology
• Visual rhetoric
• Visual literacy
• Visual arts

Further reading

Cultural studies

Vizualna kultura