Is there one visual culture or are there multiple visual cultures? On the one hand, it is obvious that images do not exist and cannot be understood independently. Rather, they are embedded in institutions and cultural contexts. This common ground suggests an understanding of visual culture as a singular phenomenon. On the other hand the plurality of pictorial representations - from Sitcoms to illustrations in childrens' books, from cartoons to satellite photos, from high art to everyday life - suggests the conception of visual culture as a singular phenomenon to be misleading. The visual world is a field of conflict and tension between self and other, mainstream and counterculture. The articles in this book include both theoretical reflections on the dialectics of visual culture(s) as well as case studies. The focus lies on examples from the U.S. American context - from the focusing on Native Americans as the 'Vanishing Race' in the 19th-century Photography to the TV coverage of the Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster in February, 2003. This book is therefore highly recommendable to both students and scholars of American Studies als well as those interested in the interdisciplinary debate on visual culture(s).

This classic text, reissued to coincide with the 800th anniversary of the City of Liverpool, was originally published in 1967. It is a milestone in the examination of urban arts movements and also provides the starting point for looking at art in Liverpool from the 1960s to the present day and beyond. Based on a survey commissioned by the Bluecoat Society of Arts, the author did something that had never before been done for a single city, and arguably has never been done since. He surveyed the history of the visual arts in the city, looked at the cultural and institutional environment in which they developed, and asked the people of Liverpool how they viewed the visual arts in Liverpool - both in terms of public art and art in enclosed spaces. Willett saw a place with strong traditions in the visual arts, with new developments associated with the city's emergence in the 1960s as a centre for music and poetry. Willett concluded with an agenda for the development of art in Liverpool, and the spirit of this imbued much of the Bluecoat's work in the decades following publication. Revised with a new introduction Art in a City is a marker for the history of the visual arts in Liverpool.

This title is a collection of essays based on a major international symposium held in Stockholm in 2005 on Ingmar Bergman's legacy. Moving beyond simple auteurist readings of his films, these writings evaluate the theatrical and literary sides of Bergman's work to reconsider his achievements.

For many weeks, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 dominated the newspapers which covered the consequences with an unprecedented immediateness. This study looks at diverging representations of 9/11 in U.S. and German newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung) and explores effects on its possible readerships. The impact of the attacks, forms of heroism, the enactment of leadership, various demonstrations of patriotism and grief as well as the textual and visual presentation of the attacks are analyzed in detail. These intermedial representations reaffirm or contest U.S. American grand narratives. While the German newspapers tend to focus on information and analysis, the U.S. papers tend to strengthen shattered U.S. American identity constructions. The study is based on nearly 2,000 newspaper articles and documents the wide scope of topics prevalent in the post-9/11 newspaper coverage.