Who's Who in the Visual Studies Program
Overview
Visual Studies Minor
 
Courses: Visual Studies (VIST)

Who's Who in the Visual Studies Program

Director:
Tracy Xavia Karner, PhD

Overview

The University of Houston’s Visual Studies program examines the aesthetic, ethical, historical, philosophical, psychological, social, and symbolic issues raised by visual images.  Our primary interests involve not only the ways that creators of visual sources construct and encode images, but also how viewers perceive and interpret these images.  Drawing on faculty from nearly a dozen departments, the program combines the methods and perspectives of architecture, art history, cognitive science, communication, cultural, literary, and media studies, education, history, informational technology, optometry, perceptual psychology, semiotics, visual anthropology and visual sociology.

The Visual Studies program’s undergraduate curriculum divides into three sequential stages.  The first foundational stage consists of the program’s interdisciplinary, team-taught introductory course. This course, which is designed to insure a common background for the program’s students, will include components on vision and light; the philosophy of art; aesthetics; modes of interpretation; and the use of visual sources in ethnographic investigation.

The second stage will allow students to choose from a series of relevant approved courses taught by affiliated UH faculty that involve the interpretation of visual images, visual methods and analytical approaches, or research employing visual sources. 

The program culminates with a capstone experience which will consist either of a substantial research project, under the direction of a faculty mentor, or an internship with community organizations supplemented by an essay or final project exploring the significance of this placement.

The Visual Studies minor is housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (483 PGH) and is directed by Dr. Tracy Xavia Karner (Sociology).