What is visual literacy and where is it at Duke?
Visual Literacy:
The ability to recognize and understand ideas conveyed through visible actions or images (as pictures). (Merriam-Webster)
“Visual literacy is the ability to find meaning in imagery. It involves a set of skills ranging from simple identification--naming what one sees--to complex interpretation on contextual, metaphoric and philosophical levels. . . . Visual literacy usually begins to develop as a viewer finds his/her own relative understanding of what s/he confronts, usually based on concrete and circumstantial evidence. It eventually involves considering the intentions of the maker, applying systems for thinking and rethinking one's opinions, and acquiring a body of information to support conclusions and judgments. The expert will also express these understandings in a specialized vocabulary.” (Phillip Yenawine) http://www.vtshome.org/research/visual-thinking
Research Visual Literacy at Duke Libraries
http://guides.library.duke.edu/vislit
Expand your Visual Literacy at the Nasher
http://www.nasher.duke.edu/visual-literacy.php
Other places at Duke to find Visual Literacy:
Franklin Humanities Institute http://www.fhi.duke.edu/
Visual Studies Initiative http://visualstudies.duke.edu/
Center for Documentary Studies http://cds.aas.duke.edu/index.html
Arts of the Moving Image http://ami.duke.edu/
MFA program in Experimental and Documentary Arts http://mfaeda.duke.edu/about
Need some Visual Literacy for a project? Look here.
Sources on Visual Literacy across the curriculum: Visual Literacy Bibliography.pdf
Other Resources:
International Visual Literacy Association
http://www.ivla.org/org_what_vis_lit.htm#definition
Association of College and Research Libraries Visual Literacy Competency Standards http://acrlvislitstandards.wordpress.com/
Credit: Visitors to the exhibition "Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art" take in Liu Xiaodong's 2005 painting "Hotbed." Photo by Dr. J. Caldwell
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