Research Guides: Liberal Arts & Sciences Research Guide: Visual Culture: Art

Step #1: Encylopedias

Getting started? Become an instant expert by using an academic encyclopedia. Unlike Wikipedia, these often can be cited in your research papers!

Oxford Art Online
Oxford Art Online offers access to the most authoritative, inclusive, and easily searchable online art resources available today. Through a single gateway, users can access and cross-search Oxford’s acclaimed, regularly updated art reference works: the Grove Dictionary of Art and the Benezit Dictionary of Artists.

Includes over 200,000 articles that span ancient to contemporary art and architecture, as well as over 19,000 images of works of art, structures, plans, and artist signatures
Credo Reference
Full text articles from over 600 academic encyclopedias, guides, handbooks. Use the concept map for a visual mind-mapping tool.

Step #2: Library Books

Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography by Sarah Brophy (Editor); Janice Hladki (Editor)
Call Number: P93.5 E53

ISBN: 9781442646605

Publication Date: 2014

A unique examination of visual autobiography’s involvement in the global cultural politics of health, disability, and the body. [The] ... collection looks at images of selfhood and embodiment in a variety of media and with a particular focus on bodily identities and practices that challenge the norm.
Visual Culture (2nd Edition) by Richard Howells; Joaquim Negreiros
Call Number: P93.5 H68 2012

ISBN: 9780745650715

Publication Date: 2012

Revised, expanded, and updated, this book examines visual literacy, looking at how meaning is both made and transmitted in a visual world. Designed as an introduction to the analysis of all kinds of visual text.
Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance, Film by A.L. Rees et al.
Call Number: NH1000 E8

ISBN: 9781854379740

Publication Date: 2011

While video in museums has received considerable attention, experiments beyond the exhibition space have not. Here, leading scholars trace expanded and multiscreen cinema from its origins in early abstract film and the Bauhaus era to postwar happenings and live events in Europe and the United States, the first multimedia experiments of the 1960s, and the fusion of multiscreen art with sonic art and music from the 1970s onward.

Step #2a: Library Catalogue Search Tips

For BEST results:

remember that visual culture research combine ART and studies in HUMANITIES (psychology, sociology, anthropology)
given that the library print collection specializes in art/design topics already, try "subject keyword" searches on broad humanities subjects; such as: anthropology; sociology; political science*
- use * for variants of root word (ex. Canad* will search Canada, Canadian, Canada's, etc.

The library PRINT collection has only selected liberal arts and sciences titles so try Ebook Central for many more:

Ebook Central

Step #2b: Ebooks

Visual Analysis of Behaviour : From Pixels to Semantics by Shaogang Gong and Tao Xiang
ISBN: 0857296698
Canadian Missionaries, Indigenous Peoples: Representing Religion at Home and Abroad by Alvyn Austin, Jamie Scott
ISBN: 0802037844
Voyages of the Self : Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature by Barbara Novak
ISBN: 0195387910
Seeing Spatial Form by Michael Jenkin and Laurence Harris
ISBN: 0195172884

Step #3: Journal Articles

Art & Architecture Source
Combines content from Art Full Text, Art Index Retrospective (1929-1984), Art & Architecture Complete. Provides access to more than 630 international full-text journals and thousands of images, books and magazine articles.
Help Guide
SAGE Journals
Sage Journals provides access to more than 1,100 journals, including over 200 gold open access journals, and 400 society partners. Users can browse journals by various disciplines, such as design, architecture, humanities, social sciences, science, medicine, gender studies, media studies, and more.

About Sage
Taylor & Francis Journals Online
Access to more than 3,000 leading social science & humanities journals and includes access to full-text issues from 1997 forward. Subject coverage includes a wide range of scholarly articles in a variety of subject areas such as business and management, disability studies, visual arts, library & information science, history, cultural and communication studies, and literature.
Project MUSE
Project MUSE is a non-profit organization founded by Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library and supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. MUSE provides full-text access to 600+ scholarly journals published by more than 120 university presses and scholarly societies in the fields of visual arts, cultural studies, gender studies, economics and others.

Note: The Library provides current full-text access to many JSTOR Current titles via Project MUSE.

Also Try: Image Databases

Also Try: Visual Literacy Tutorial

How Do You Look? Visual Literacy Tutorial
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University: this site is an absolute must for any student researching visual literacy! Using conceptual "Frameworks," "Medium" or "Periods & Cultures" as a starting vantage point, the guide helps unpack how to ask questions and conduct research to respond.