Italian Visual Cultures

This article explores how ‘Visual Culture Studies’ has emerged since the 1990s as a productively unstable cluster of research concerns and practices, extending beyond the sectorial bounds of traditional visually-oriented disciplines such as art history or architecture. The two areas of screen studies and photography are explored as case studies that demonstrate how Visual Cultures approaches have expanded research horizons and enhanced teaching and outreach practice in Italian Studies. The article highlights aspects of visual production that have been variously dominant or marginalised in Italian Studies to date and explores how the new, interdisciplinary field fosters interconnections and exchanges, opens up discussion of the complexity of cultural production and media, and is enriched by engagement with visual, textual, and media theory.