Visual Culture & Images
This term describes the literal, dictionary meaning of an image or word — what you see at face value.
What is denotation?
This vice president was sworn in as U.S. president on Air Force One on November 22, 1963.
Who is Lyndon B. Johnson?
This magazine, founded by John H. Johnson in 1945, offered Black Americans a different visual representation than mainstream publications like Life.
What is Ebony magazine?
This type of source is created at the time of an event — such as a photograph, newspaper article, speech, or government document.
What is a primary source?
Jack Kirby and Stan Lee introduced Spider-Man in 1962. This is his alter ego — a high school student bitten by a radioactive spider.
Who is Peter Parker?
This term describes the emotional or cultural associations that an image or word carries beyond its literal meaning.
What is connotation?
In 1963, Life magazine published photographs of police turning fire hoses on children during this campaign in Birmingham, Alabama.
What is the Children's Crusade (or the Birmingham Campaign)?
These two terms are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct — one refers to the overall arrangement of elements within an image, while the other specifically describes what is included or excluded at the edges.
What are composition and framing?
A peer-reviewed journal article analyzing the civil rights movement is an example of this type of source, which interprets or analyzes primary materials.
What is a secondary scholarly source?
The Lorax is read as an allegory for this growing political and cultural movement of the 1960s–70s.
What is the environmental movement?
Norman Rockwell's 1964 painting depicts a young Black girl being escorted to school. Name the painting.
What is "The Problem We All Live With"?
This Vietnamese Buddhist monk set himself on fire in Saigon in 1963 to protest the persecution of Buddhists, captured in a famous photograph by Malcolm Browne.
Who is Thích Quảng Đức?
This term describes the self-published, small-circulation works that prioritize independent voice and distribution outside of mainstream media channels — and that students in this class created as a final project.
What is a zine?
This citation style, commonly used in art history and the humanities, uses footnotes or endnotes, a bibliography, or in-text author-date citations.
What is Chicago Style?
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Marvel comics of the early 1960s frequently featured scientists transformed by radiation or accidents. This reflected public fascination and anxiety about this postwar phenomenon.
What is Big Science?
This branch of art historical analysis examines the formal elements of a work—line, color, shape, space, and composition—without focusing on content or meaning.
What is formal analysis?
The Second Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s reclaimed the Native Hawaiian language, hula, and visual arts as acts of political resistance against the earlier event that stripped Hawaii of its independence.
What is the US Annexation of Hawaii?
This annual competition recognizes the world's best photojournalism and has helped define what images come to represent major historical events
What are Pictures of the Year (POY)?
When writing about a visual source like a photograph or painting, you should begin with this step — describing what you literally see before making any interpretive claims.
What is a visual description?
In 1962, NASA launched this program — commissioning painters, sculptors, and photographers to document the space age — making it one of the few government agencies to officially sponsor the arts.
What is the NASA Art Program?
The Great Wall mural in the San Fernando Valley, begun in 1974, is one of the longest murals in the world. Name the artist who led its creation.
Who is Judith Baca?
NASA launched this program in 1961 with the goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade, fulfilling a challenge issued by President Kennedy.
What is the Apollo program?
Akwesasne Notes, a Mohawk-run newspaper published beginning in 1969, created its poster The Shrine of Hypocrisy by superimposing this historical figure's face over Mount Rushmore — reclaiming a colonized sacred site through appropriation.
Who is Sitting Bull?
This librarian specializes in helping students research art historical topics and is a key resource for finding primary and secondary sources for your papers in this course.
Who is Janet Hilts?
This 1962 Andy Warhol series of silkscreen paintings depicting a common grocery store item became one of the defining works of Pop Art, challenging the boundary between commercial culture and fine art.
What are the Campbell's Soup Cans?