Ways of Seeing

With the recent deaths of director Elia Kazan and actor Marlon Brando, Leo Braudy’s On the Waterfront (British Film Institute, 2006) is a timely and definitive study on the 1954 film. The book discusses the elements that made the movie a classic, from how it was written to how it was shot and edited. Braudy, who co-chaired the Visual Culture Initiative seven years ago, is one of the early pioneers of visual studies in the College and one of the nation’s leading film critics. “I’m interested in storytelling,” he said, “whether that is done visually, verbally, musically, or in any combination of forms; whether it’s done on the page, on the canvas, or on stage.”	Leo Braudy
Malcolm Baker	Malcolm Baker, an 18th century sculpture specialist, is interested in the changing afterlife of objects. He teaches a graduate course on the history of art collecting and display at the Getty Center, where students reconstruct the activity of collections, reconfiguring the ways the pieces are viewed. Discussing questions of authenticity and connoisseurship, Baker said the field is “about perception and making sense of the relationship between objects.”
“The urban experience is intensely visual, so that [visual] dimension of history must be a part of urban studies,” said Phil Ethington. “By the same token, visual expression can be very powerful and should be part of the scholarly toolbox.” Ethington not only studies but also produces visual culture in the course of his multidisciplinary research. To represent and analyze historical change of global metropolises, he has experimented with new forms of cartography, photography and interactive multimedia.	Phil Ethington
Nancy Lutkehaus	Teaching courses on ethnographic film and visual anthropology, added to her experience as editor of the Visual Anthropology Review, led the way for Nancy Lutkehaus’ recent project about images and media representations of Margaret Mead. She explores the meanings of various images of Mead — the most visible of all 20th century American anthropologists — in her forthcoming book, Margaret Mead and the Media: Anthropology and the Making of an American Icon.
“What do we see when we see a dream or an X-ray image?” asks interdisciplinary scholar Akira Lippit. His latest book Atomic Light (Shadow Optics) (University of Minnesota Press, 2005) explores the “thresholds” and “extremities” of the visible — phenomena that our eyes cannot detect, but that we can “see,” as well as that which we can see but fail to notice. Lippit terms the latter avisuality, which “would certainly include the overlooked,” he said. “A long section of my book addresses Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which is very much about the avisuality of race in America.” The book also considers two forms of extreme radiation — X-rays in the late 19th century and atomic radiation in the mid 20th century — and their effect on visual culture.	Akira Lippit
Lisa Bitel	Lisa Bitel’s latest book project, Test Sights: The Medieval Debate Over Christian Religious Visions, explores the evolution of historic religious visions from individual experiences to a shared form of expression or a written description of a visual event. It started, she said, with her love for what she calls “vision kitsch” — from online chronicles of miraculous sightings of the Virgin Mary to her Virgen de Guadalupe beach towel. In collaboration with neuroscientist and biomedical engineer Norberto Grzywacz, she also studies the effects of environment and culture on human vision. And, with Matt Gainer of USC Information Services, she is preparing a multimedia exhibit of iconic visions, funded by the Center for Religion and Civic Culture.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the color green was not just a hue that fabrics and paints might display, but a whole way of looking at the world. In his forthcoming book, Green Thought, Bruce Smith demonstrates that seeing green engages the world through emotions as well as reason. In physical terms, green was thought to be the middle-most color in the spectrum because it combined equal parts of the earth and light. Psychologically, green was thought to be the most pleasant color, and was also associated with passion. The book is also a critique of the skeptical distance that critics over the past 25 years have kept between themselves and the poems, novels and plays that they study.	Bruce Smith