About
Visual Studies concerns all aspects of the production, circulation and reception of visual images in culture, science, and society. It emerged in the late 1970s during the same period as Cultural Studies as a field of inquiry throughout the humanities. Studies in visual culture engage students in the analysis of the rhetoric and semiotics of images, providing access to how visual meaning is socially, politically, and culturally constructed and received. Visual Studies enables students to interpret the representations that shape the visual constructs of a particular society, to consider how systems of visual codes differ from culture to culture, and to think through how the symbolic constructions of life organizes how one sees, understands, and participates in natural and social environments. Most importantly, establishing a clear connection between the theory and the practice of visuality is the foundation of Duke’s Visual Studies Initiative.