Wanda B. Knight

Unpacking Privilege: Memory, Culture, Gender, Race, and Power in Visual Culture

The term visual culture includes all manifestations of cultural life that are significantly expressedthrough visual aspects and interpreted through individual and shared experiences (Carson & Pajaczkowska, 2001). Visual culture includes art (e.g., paintings, sculptures, performances), cultural practices (e. g., holiday or home decorations, ceremonial paraphernalia, clothing), media images (e.g.,advertisements, news images, videos, television, film), and other forms (e.g., clothing, toys, comic books, cosmetic surgery, quilts , foods) (Duttrnann, 2002; Sturken & Cartwright, 2001; Barrett, 2003a). However, teaching visual culture involves more than extending the range of visual artifacts in school curricula. It also entails understanding and using those art ifacts in new ways (Duncum, 2002; Barrett, 2003b; Freedman, 2003; Keifer-Boyd, Amburgy, & Knight, 2003). Visual culture is not based on traditional modernist concepts of aesthetic experience, artistic genius, or elements and principles of design. It is based on understanding cultural practices as ideology, social power, and constructed forms of knowledge. Teaching visual culture requires a critical examination of the power of visual culture to shape the ways in which we come to know the world and ourselves (Pauly,2003). During fall semester 2004, the authors served as instructors of a professional development course that explored ways to incorporate visual culture content into school curricula. The course was offered online through the Penn State World Campus to practicing art teachers (KeiferBoyd, Amburgy, & Knight, 2004). Teachers who partici pated in the course had the option to receive professional development credit, and four of the six did so. All enrolled with the goal of developing and implementing a visual culture approach to their teaching with the support of a community of art educators .

Revealing Power: A Visual Culture Orientation to Student-Teacher Relationships.

The value of recent theoretical perspectives in art education does not lie in providing comprehensive definitions that include all the artifacts and properties that “count” as visual culture, material culture, or mass arts. Instead, the value of articulating theoretical perspectives lies in mapping the terrain of cultural phenomena. Theoretical maps guide the ways we traverse the terrain of new content in art education, creating rhizomes of possibilities.