Output details

Visual culture studies: interviews with key thinkers

This book is a contribution to Visual Culture Studies and its associated fields of inquiry. It is not an exercise in data gathering; rather, it advocates and lobbies for the intellectual ambitions of the interview form itself as a paradigm for generating new knowledges. The book is driven by three research questions: How does Visual Culture Studies as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry transform scholarship in the Arts and Humanities? How do images, objects, media and environments compel us to reconsider the parameters of Visual Culture Studies itself? How does the interview form (as a ‘living methodology’) function as a paradigm for generating new knowledges? The output submitted comprises: (1) a sole-authored Preface (4,000 words) on the topic of the interview form itself as a paradigm (a ‘living methodology’) for generating new knowledge. To this end, it foregrounds: the figure of the intellectual, what motives them and why, the nature of the ‘encounter’ as an occasion for ‘thoughts-in-formation’, and the immediacy of live conversation. In this instance by way of the interview, this foregrounding constructs a productive dialogue (not, it must be noted, a consensus). Such dialogue builds significant and sustainable intellectual communities, so vital for an emerging field of inquiry such as Visual Culture Studies. (2) a sole-authored Introduction (7,000 words) on Visual Culture Studies as an emerging field of interdisciplinary inquiry. (3) thirteen interviews (80,000 words, 30,000 by the interviewer) with many of the world’s leading scholars of Visual Culture Studies from the UK, continental Europe and North America, including Bruno, Cartwright, Foster, Jay, Mirzoeff and Mitchell engaging critically with their oeuvre. These interviews offer insights into the ways in which Visual Culture Studies challenge the parameters of more traditional areas of study across the Arts and Humanities.