Visual worlds

de John R. Hall, Blake Stimson

"Visual Worlds was conceived to address a bold query: how, it asks, are our experience and understanding of vision and visual form changing under pressure from the various social, economic and cultural factors that are linked under the term globalization? To consider this question, the volume gathers together a diverse group of internationally renowned artists and scholars from a variety of fields including art history, literary theory and criticism, cultural studies, film and television studies, intellectual history and sociology. At issue for each author is what Lauren Berlant, in the volume's first essay, calls "dense and radiant images of the politically saturated" world that are "employed as vehicles for shaping a collective sense of social belonging." The other essays overlap in their considerations of the tensions between cultures and worlds, political life and everyday social experience, peace and war. The conversation that develops between the voices represented here touches down on points arrayed across many visual worlds and provides a unique opportunity for considering the changing character of visual experience today."--Jacket.