Online Readings:

An Introduction to Visual Culture, by Nicholas Mirzoeff, SUNY Stony Brook

Picture This: Literary Theory and the Study of Visual Culture, by Paul Jay, Loyola University Chicago

Rescuing Art from "Visual Culture Studies," by Michelle Marder Kamhi

Semiotics and Western Painting: An Economy of Signs, by Thomas Quigley, the New School of Social Research. A semiotic analysis of Picasso's famous painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Introducing Cyberculture, Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies Website, by David Silver, School of Communications University of Washington

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin

A Web Essay on the Male Gaze, Fashion Advertising, and the Pose, Prof. Thomas Streeter, U. of Vermont

Notes on the Gaze, by David Chandler. A comprehensive overview of theories of the gaze.

The Semiotics of Media (Introduction to Semiotics and Advertising), Prof Thomas Streeter, U. of Vermont

Semiotics for Beginners, by David Chandler

Consumer Culture and Modernity by Don Slater (Introduction), Professor of Sociology, U. of London (Polity Press, 1997)

The Conquest of Cool, by Thomas Frank (Introduction), U. of Chicago Press.

From Big Brother to Electronic Panopticon, by David Lyons (Chapter four from The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994): 57-80)

"Video Art: An Historical Sketch," by Christine Tamblyn

The Unreal Person: Portraiture in the Digital Age, Irit Krygier. See The Unreal Person exhibition website for images she discusses.