We can no longer see, much less teach, transhistorical truths, timeless works of art, and unchanging critical criteria without a highly developed sense of irony about the grand narratives of the past, declare the editors, who also coedited Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation (1990). The field of art history is not unique in finding itself challenged and enlarged by cultural debates over issues of class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, and gender. Visual Culture
assembles some of the foremost scholars of cultural studies and art history to explore new critical approaches to a history of representation seen as something
different from a history of art.

CONTRIBUTORS: Andres Ross, Michael Ann Holly, Mieke Bal, David Summers, Constance Penley, Kaja Silverman, Ernst Van Alphen, Norman Bryson, Wolfgang Kemp, Whitney Davis, Thomas Crow, Keith Moxey, John Tagg, Lisa Tickner.