From art history to visual culture: The study of the visual after the cultural turn

Visual studies is an interdisciplinary curricular initiative and a research area that locates the visual image at the center of the meaning-making processes constituting its cultural environment. This thesis examines the theoretical framework and the history of this emerging field. The main questions considered are: What are the relationships between the study of art history and the study of the visual and the cultural? What are the attitudes of art historians to visual studies today? How does one teach visual culture?; There are two aspects---disciplinary and institutional---and two "dimensions" to this project. The first dimension is temporal, concerning the art-historical enterprise as it had been shaped by currents of thought before the advent of critical and cultural theory, contrasted with the present state of scholarship in relation to philosophies of history and aesthetics. The second dimension is spatial: similarities and differences in the curricula and methods of teaching visual culture in four American universities are considered.; Visual studies does not replace art history. The former expands the study of images and adds a new dimension to the traditional history of art by looking at images that have not been considered art. Visual studies, a critique of universal theory, works to re-understand aesthetics. It deconstructs grand narratives and creates localized and partial accounts of the past in which subjectivity is no longer hidden. Visual studies is not limited to the study of representations but extends to the everyday practices of seeing and showing.; This study also offers a comparative analysis of the goals, organization and curricula of two graduate programs in visual studies (University of Rochester; University of California at Irvine), supplemented by an examination of the objectives and contents of two undergraduate courses on visual culture (University of Chicago; State University of New York at Stony Brook). It explains differences in the pedagogical approaches of these programs and courses in terms of differences in theoretical positions professed by their founders and instructors, as well as the natures of the various institutions.