scholarly journals Soundscapes, Sonic Cultures, and American Studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. xix-xxvi
Author(s):  
Nassim Balestrini ◽  
Klaus Rieser ◽  
Katharina Fackler
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Academic Practices ◽  
Sound Features

What happens when we imagine the sonic worlds of literary texts, when we focus on voice in film, or when we study the sound of social protest? How can we integrate sound studies into our academic practices? How does sound relate to space and place? How can American studies scholars understand the link between sonic and social relations? Music, voices, noise, and silence are constitutive elements of phenomena that we as American studies scholars regularly investigate. However, in contrast to the well-established prominence of visual culture studies, sound features less prominently in our field's research—an oversight (pardon the pun!) this issue of JAAAS seeks to remedy.

Making touch analog: The prospects and perils of a haptic media studies

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 1523-1540 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Parisi ◽  
Jason Edward Archer
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Research Programs ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Oriented Approach

In this article, we argue for the urgency of establishing a coherent tradition of haptic media studies, suggesting that the fields of visual culture studies and sound studies provide analogs, however imperfect, for modeling a new touch-oriented approach to media. This call to make touch like the senses of seeing and hearing echoes previous movements in touch’s discursive and institutional history, as investigators in prior generations similarly aspired to transform tactility through the development of new institutionally grounded research programs. Furthermore, we outline one possible genealogy of haptic media that attends specifically to the power relations expressed through the technoscientific harnessing of touch by haptics. We close with a programmatic set of suggestions for operationalizing haptic media studies.

scholarly journals A descriptive mode in art and the issue of a representation

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-17
Author(s):  
O. V. Bezzubova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
American Art ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Research

The predominant for XX century art studies tradition was seriously reconsidered during the 1970– 1980s during the so called «new art history» development, when many received concepts were called into question. A notion of descriptiv e mode of painting proposed by an American art historian S. Alpers is of great interest in this context because it allows us to revise the homogeneous development of European art. While elaborating the concept of descriptive mode of painting, Alpers took under consideration a wide range of historical and cultural sources thus contributed to the new research approach nowadays known under the title of visual culture studies. It is not less important that she also focused on the issue of pictorial representation, which inquires the essence of the work of art.

scholarly journals Social and Biological Context of Physical Culture and Sport

2010 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerzy Kosiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Human Organism ◽  
Physical Culture ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Cultural Character ◽  
Biological Context

Social and Biological Context of Physical Culture and SportAuthor underlines that biological sciences connected with the human being are traditionally - after MacFadden, among others - counted among physical culture sciences. Because of the bodily foundations of human physical activity, they perform - shortly speaking - a significant cognitive function: they describe natural foundations of particular forms of movement. In spite of the fact that knowledge in that respect is extremely important for multiform human activity in the field of physical culture, it is not knowledge of cultural character. From the formal (that is, institutional) viewpoint it is strictly connected with culture studies, but it has separate methodological and theoretical assumptions. Knowledge of that type is focused on the human organism and not on effects of mental, axiocreative, symbolic activity of the human being entangled in social relations. It includes auxiliary data which support practical - that is, in that case, physical, bodily - activity. Its reception of axiological (ethical and aesthetical), social (philosophical, sociological, pedagogical, historical {universal or strictly defined - referring e.g. to art and literature with the connected theories} or political) character is dealt with by the humanities (in other words: social sciences) constituting an immanent and the fundamental - and hence the most important - part of culture studies. Putting stress on alleged superiority and the dominating role of natural (biological in that case) sciences within physical culture sciences and the connected marginalization of the humanities - which constitute, after all, a necessary and hence an unquestionable foundation for culture studies, their essence and objectivisation - is, euphemistically speaking, a clear shortcoming in the field of science studies.The abovementioned exaltation and aspirations for superiority, as well as deepening and more and more aggressive marginalization of the humanities (understood in that paper as a synonym for social sciences) in the field of physical culture sciences may lead to the separation of biological sciences.

scholarly journals Temptation, Resistance, and Art Objects: On the Lack of Material Theory within Art History before the Material Turn

2019 ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Charolotta Krispinsson
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material Turn

Niccolò di Pietro Gerini's painting “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” (1390-1400) serves as a point of departure for this essay. It depicts Saint Anthony during a lapse of self-control as he attempts to resist an alluring mound of gold. Since the mound is in fact made of genuine gold leaves applied to the painting's surface, it works both as a representation of temptation as well as an object of desire affecting the beholder. The aim of this essay is to explore different approaches to materiality before the material turn within the art history discipline by examining two opposing directions within the writing and practice of art history:  the tradition of connoisseurship; and the critique of the fetish within the theoretical apparatus of new art history and visual culture studies of the 1980s and 90s. As an expression of positivism within art history, it is argued that connoisseurship be considered within the context of its empirical practices dealing with objects. What is commonly described as the connoisseur's “taste” or “love for art” would then be just another way to describe the intimate relationship formed between art historians and the very objects under their scrutiny. More than other humanist disciplines, art history is, with the possible exception of archaeology, an object-based discipline. It is empirically anchored in the unruly, deep sea of objects commonly known as the history of art. Still, there has been a lack of in-depth theoretical reflection on the materiality of artworks in the writings of art historians before the material turn. The question however, is not ifthis is so, but rather, why?In this essay, it is suggested that the art history discipline has been marked by a complicated love-hate relationship with the materiality of which the very objects of study, more often than not, are made of; like Saint Anthony who is both attracted to and repelled by the shapeless mass of gold that Lucifer tempts him with. While connoisseurship represents attraction, resistance to the allure of objects can be traced to the habitual critique of fetishism of the first generations of visual culture studies and new art history. It reflects a negative stance towards objects and the material aspect of artworks, which enhanced a conceived dichotomy between thinking critically and analytically in contrast to managing documents and objects in archives and museum depositories. However, juxtaposing the act of thinking with the practice of manual labour has a long tradition in Western intellectual history. Furthermore, it is argued that art history cannot easily be compared to the history of other disciplines because of the simple fact that artworks are typically quite expensive and unique commodities, and as such, they provoke not just aesthetic but also fetishist responses. Thus, this desire to separate art history as a scientific discipline from the fetishism of the art market has had the paradoxical effect of causing art historians to shy away from developing methodologies and theory about materiality as an act of resistance. 

Visualizing Literacy: Images, Media, and Method

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan P. Bonfiglio
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Visual Literacy ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Media Research

While biblical scholars have long been interested in questions about textual literacy in the ancient world, relatively little attention has been given to the concept of visual literacy – that is, the extent to which images were produced and read as a type of language. The following article introduces this concept as it has been developed in recent work in visual culture studies and then offers a series of probes that attempt to assess the prominence of visual literacy in the ancient Near Eastern world. Though it is not possible to arrive at a precise rate of visual literacy, there is ample evidence to suggest that those who produced/commissioned art were highly concerned about questions regarding the readability of their materials and often privileged artistic motifs over epigraphic content in the design and implementation of certain mixed-media artifacts. These lines of evidence suggest that images functioned as a prominent vehicle of communication in the ancient world alongside, and sometimes in place of, text-based media. Research on visual literacy not only sheds new light on the ancient media contexts of the biblical world but also offers a more explicit rationale for how and why ancient images should be used in biblical interpretation today.


Introducing Contagious Sympathies

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-49
Author(s):  
Eric Langley
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
Spreading Disease

In this introductory chapter, the study is situated in relation to contemporary scholarship—demonstrating both points of contact with and departure from key critical interlocutors such as Nancy Selleck and Robert N. Watson, recent writing by James Kuzner and Joe Moshenska, and theoretical work by Teresa Brennan, Michel Serres, and others—while offering an overview of the study’s concerns. It considers the place of sympathy in the early-modern mindset, looking at scientific, theological, philosophical, and literary texts to give a sense of how sympathetic relations are understood as integral to social relations and the operations of the natural world. It seeks to complicate this picture by showing how sympathy is understood as a pathological force, spreading disease.

Introduction

Picture World ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Rachel Teukolsky
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Media History ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Cross Media ◽  
Cultural Field ◽  
Words And Images

The introduction explores both Victorian and contemporary theories of visual culture, while developing the book’s own interdisciplinary methodology. Visual culture studies, media history, art history, literary history, and cultural history number among the book’s disciplines. The chapters move across media to study novels and poems alongside photographs and illustrations. Weaving together both visual and textual strands, the book presents a revisionist, multidisciplinary approach to “culture” as it was lived and experienced in the nineteenth century. Academic divides between the disciplines today have obscured the cross-media connections studied in the book. The book’s approach captures the historical reality of the nineteenth century’s turbulent media moment, when the bounds of high art and mass culture were not yet fixed, and words and images mingled indiscriminately in the cultural field.

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