Scholars Day proposal

The panel presents and discusses experimental forms of academic composition in the "Media Culture" course of the MFA Program in Visual Studies (at the Visual Studies Workshop). While exploring themes and elements of the media environment, the goal was to further our understanding of the role of the image in society by the direct application of our visual skills to the academic content of the course. In designing the final project, the course employed W. J. T. Mitchell's concept of the "imagetext" - a composite, synthetic work that gives images and audio-visual signs a primary role along with text. The course encouraged multiple forms of communication - short videos, web pages, cartoons, and artists' books – while insisting on standards of research, argumentation and rigor. While summarizing and reflecting on the results, the panel addresses open questions about visual rhetoric as a valid form of academic scholarship. See: Media Culture syllabus