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).

PrefaceI. Production of Knowledge in Visual CultureDimitri LiebschPictorial Turn and Visual CultureRalf AdelmannDigital Visualizations and the Production of Knowledge in Television NewsJessica BubenThe Psychedelic Sewing RoomII. Politics of PicturesJanusz KazmierczakThe Politics of the Visual in the American Alternative Press of the 1960sStefanie SchneiderStop them damned pictures! - Political Cartoons, Visual Culture and the Construction of Anglo-American RelationsNic LeonhardtPictorial (Hi)stories - Illustrated Coverage of the Franco-Prussian War 1870/71Andreas FahrExpressing the Inexpressible: u.s. and German Coverage of the School-Shootings in Littleton and ErfurtIII. Imaginary Discourses - Discourses of the ImageWalter C. MetzFrom Plato's Cave to bin Laden's: The Worst Sincerity of Ron Howard's The Missing (2003)Bettina LockemannConstructing the World: Documentary Photography in Artistic UseClaudia OlkVagueness, Vision, and the Veil - Perceptual Indeterminacy in Modernist FictionInes KatenhusenThe Living Museum: The Work of Alexander Dorner (1893-1957)Birgit DäwesJames Luna, Gerald Vizenor, and the Vanishing Race: Native American Performative Responses to Hege(mne)monic Image ConstructionV. Image, Identity, and AlterityIngrid GessnerErasure and Visual Recovery: Displaying Japanese American Internment ExperiencesSteven HoelscherPhotography as Social and Economic Encounter: The Visual Culture of Nineteenth-Century Native American PicturesGeneviève SusemihlThe Visual Construction of the North American Indian in the World of German Children ContributorsIndex