The Visual Studies Companion

Concerning the Cover: Creative Visual Kinship by Alexa Vachon

Introduction to The Visual Studies Companion
Susan Hansen, Kate Korroch, and Julie Patarin-Jossec

Part I
What Was Accomplished?

Introduction to Part I: What Was Accomplished?
Kate Korroch, Susan Hansen, and Julie Patarin-Jossec

1. No Tyre, No Movement: Visual Ethnographies of Pneuma-City, Lagos, Nigeria
David Garbin, Simon Coleman, Andrew Esiebo, and Inês Valle

Origins

2. ‘'I Hate Visual Culture': The Controversial Rise of Visual Studies and the Disciplinary Politics of the Visible (2020)
Maxime Boidy

3. A Critical Assessment of the Russian-Language Literature in the Field of Visual Culture (2023)
Victoria Vasileva

4. Visual Sociology, Documentary Photography, and Photojournalism: It's (Almost) All a Matter of Context (1995)
Howard Becker

Classic Methods

5. What Constitutes an Image-Based Qualitative Methodology? (1996)
Jon Prosser

6. Talking About Pictures: A Case for Photo-Elicitation (2002)
Doug Harper

7. Visual Methodologies Revisited: Some Current Developments and Outstanding Concerns
Luc Pauwels

Experimentations

8. The Visual Essay and Sociology (1991)
John Grady

9. Does She Still Recognise You? (2021)
Jon Wagner and Leslie B.

10. Visual Challenges to the Social Sciences
Dawn Mannay

11. Understanding Innovation in Visual Methodologies and Methods
Sarah Pink

Conversation with Greg Scott

12. Conversation with Greg Scott: Fostering Video Ethnographic Scholarship
Greg Scott, Susan Hansen, and Julie Patarin-Jossec

Part II
What Was Neglected?

Introduction to Part II: What Was Neglected?
Kate Korroch and Susan Hansen

13. Unframing Wholesomeness: Jessie Willcox Smith, Gender, Domesticity, and the Archive
Sara Reed

Expansions

14. Multisensory Approaches in Migration Research: Reflections and Pathways (2024)
Amandine Desille and Karolina Nikielska-Sekuła

15. With Sonic Epistemology, Within Sonic Territory: An Essay in Fragments and Audio Descriptions
Josh Rios

16. Speculative Fiction Documentary
Juan Francisco Salazar

17. Communication, Comics, and Diagrams
Jonathan Najarian

Ethics

18. Whose Photo? Whose Voice? Who Listens?: 'Giving,' Silencing and Listening to Voice in Participatory Visual Projects (2018)
Tiffany Fairey

19. 'A Camera Is a Big Responsibility': A Lens for Analysing Children's Visual Voices (2010)
Wendy Luttrell

20. "We Know How to Navigate This Place, and You Won't": Centring Young People as Knowledge Producers and Right Bearers in Visual Research
Helen Lomax, Kate Smith, and Maria Jesus Alfaro-Simmonds

21. Ethical Challenges in Visual Research
Tracy Xavia Karner

Doing Reciprocity

22. “If Males Were Photographed Like Females" (1984)
Katrin Mulder and Emmy Scheele

23. Doing Drag: A Visual Case Study of Gender Performance (2000)
J. Brian Brown

24. Establishing the Frame: Doing Queer Reciprocity and Reflecting on Earlier Works from Visual Studies
Alpesh Kantilal Patel

25. Queer Interventions, Now and Then
Gillian Yee

26. Locating Queerness in Katrin Mulder's and Emmy Scheele's "If Males Were Photographed Like Females"
Erin Riley-Lopez

27. From Underground to Primetime: The Dialectics of Drag in a Corporate Age
Vee Forsell

28. The Sensorial Spectacle of Gender Performance as a Stage for Experiential Studies
Martina Merlo

Conversation with Ace Lehner

29. Conversation with Ace Lehner: Trans Visual Culture’s Methodological Intervention
Ace Lehner, Susan Hansen, Kate Korroch, and Julie-Patarin-Jossec

Part III
What Could Be Done?

Introduction to Part III: What Could Be Done?
Kate Korroch

30. On a Roller Coaster Ride: A Visual Essay on Exploring the Ups and Downs of Being Black Motherscholars
Lynnette Mawhinney and Laura K. Porterfield

Disciplinary Provocations

31. Virtual Reality as a Research Method: Is This the Future of Photo-Elicitation? (2019)
Rebecca McLaughlan

32. Vandalism and the Urban Visual: A Value Measure for Images in Cities
Sabina Andron

33. Roundtable on the State of Visual Studies: Collaborative Methods and Reciprocal Reflections
Ace Lehner, Nilgun Bayraktar, Amanda Cachia, Sofía Córdova, and Mehita Iqani

Digital Relationalities

34. Same, Same, but Different: Making Sense of Changes in Social Media Visuality                                                     Katrin Tiidenberg, Asko Lehmuskallio, and Maria Schreiber

35. Researching Social Media Pop Cultures: Case Studies and Reflections from Five Visual Platforms
Crystal Abidin

36. Playing the Clancy Man: Video Games, Political Affect, and Tom Clancy's Brand
Soraya Murray

37. Operational Images of the Environment: Perspectives from the Artistic to the Curatorial
Jussi Parikka

Transgressing Power

38. The Call of the Bright Blanket: Anticolonial Aesthetics in the Synesthetic Regime of Art
Asma Abbas

39. Roma Culture and Visibility: Between External Gaze and Internal Agency in Roma Visual Representations
Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka and Aidan McGarry

40. Romanticizing the Wounds of Others: Stereotype and the Future of Visual Studies
Derek Conrad Murray

Conversation with Ji Yoon Yang

41. Conversation with Ji Yoon Yang: Curation as Collective Care
Ji Yoon Yang, Kate Korroch, and Julie Patarin-Jossec

Conclusion: Curating Visual Studies
Julie Patarin-Jossec

Appendix: A Meditative Syllabus for Teaching with Visual Studies by Josh Warren

Biography

Susan Hansen (AU/UK) is President of the IVSA and Co-Chair of the Visual Methods Group at Middlesex University London; former Editor of Visual Studies; and founding Editor of Nuart Journal. Their work applies ethnomethodological and conversation analytic methods to visual studies.

Kate Korroch (US) is an Editor of Visual Studies; Editorial Assistant for Art Journal; and founding Editor of Refract: An Open Access Visual Studies Journal. Their work examines queer and trans visual culture and art history.

Julie Patarin-Jossec (FR/US) is Visiting Assistant Professor in Sociology at DePaul University, and an Editor for Visual Studies, Echographies: Journal of Sound Ethnography, and Immaterial Books. Their work explores queer sea ecologies through video ethnography.

“In its 40-year history, the field of visual studies has developed from a project aimed at enlarging art history’s subjects and theories to a politically engaged venue for exploring the visual dimensions of contemporary life. This book is an enormous achievement of condensation and clarity, and showcases one of visual studies’ more significant and less appreciated properties: unlike art history, visual studies continues to speak with a coherent voice, aimed directly at the present moment, its politics, and its possibilities.”

James Elkins, E.C. Chadbourne Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

“The Visual Studies Companion presents a rich landscape in visual studies focusing on previously understudied topics, including multisensory approaches, and discusses new ways of thinking about digital relationalities and transgressing power. The collection addresses current ethical challenges, suggests new avenues of research, and highlights the necessity of the collaborative nature of future methodologies. This book will be indispensable for anyone with a serious interest in the field of the visual.”

Margaret Dikovitskaya, Professor at Columbia University and author of Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the Cultural Turn (2005)