Despite the hubbub over the threat of “visual culture” to established scholarly disciplines, only one university offers an advanced degree by that name.
Scholars at the University of Rochester see their Ph.D. program in visual and cultural studies as in the vanguard, considering its graduates’ success in landing jobs at colleges and museums. While the university has reduced other graduate programs, it has increased support for visual and cultural studies, which is administered by the department of art and art history.
Rochester introduced the program in 1988, drawing on the interest of art-history professors such as Michael Ann Holly and Mieke Bal, and on the efforts of Norman Bryson, a literary critic who was writing extensively about the history of art.
Mr. Bryson has since moved to Harvard University. But he, Ms. Holly, and Keith Moxey, of Columbia University, have organized two conferences and edited several collections that mark the field’s emergence.
“We’re in the funny position of being somewhere in the establishment,” says Ms. Holly, now chairman of Rochester’s department of art and art history.
Among others involved in the program are David Rodowick, an English professor who specializes in film; Lisa Cartwright, author of a book about medical technology; Sharon Willis, a professor of French who writes about popular culture; Douglas Crimp, who applies queer theory to contemporary art; and Janet Wolff, a sociologist of culture with an appointment in art history.
Rochester’s program requires a first-year colloquium that raises questions about the study of visual material. After that, students follow a track that emphasizes either visual studies or critical theory.
Cornell University has offered an undergraduate major in visual studies for a decade. Other campuses have talked about adding degrees or merging departments, but have stopped short of doing so.
The University of Chicago is home to W.J.T. Mitchell, author of Picture Theory, and to Miriam Hansen and Tom Gunning, important scholars of early film.
Art-history scholars at Chicago talked about adding the words “Visual Culture” to their department’s name, says Mr. Mitchell, but settled instead for an interdisciplinary discussion group on the topic. Faculty members have developed a course for graduate students on the “problematics of the visual,” with plans under way to create an equivalent course for undergraduates.
Such courses exist at Northwestern University, among others. Courses or programs in media or visual literacy, which draw more heavily on communications, are offered by Pomona College, Syracuse and Webster Universities, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Meanwhile, professors in film studies and art history at the University of California at Irvine are planning to offer a doctoral program on the Rochester model.
Although balking at the idea of merging departments, they say visual culture is a way for faculty members in small departments to offer a unique graduate degree that doesn’t duplicate what is offered elsewhere in the California system.