Series Editor

David Blakesley
Clemson University

This is not a pipe neon lightThe reference is to Magritte's painting "La Trahison des images" ("The Treachery of Images"), 1929.  This photograph was taken by David Blakesley at The Beer Wall in Bruges, Belgium, 2019.

View the Books in the Series

Visual culture studies and visual rhetoric have been increasing areas of emphasis in scholarly studies. Drawing on the work of a variety of theorists, from Kenneth Burke in rhetorical studies to Roland Barthes in semiotics, and addressing a wide range of subjects, from supermarkets to new media, scholars established visual cultural studies as a thriving and significant area of inquiry for the new century. The impetus for such study has been the awareness that primary information sources (television, streaming media, film and the internet) are strongly graphic (or visual) rather than print- or text-based in nature. This series encourages scholars working in rhetoric, cultural studies, and communication to create new scholarly works that analyze visual phenomena and theorize visual rhetoric itself.

The previously unquestioned hegemony of verbal text has beeng challenged by what W. J. T. Mitchell labels the “pictorial turn” (Picture Theory)—a recognition of the importance and ubiquity of images in the dissemination and reception of information, ideas, and opinions—processes that lie at the heart of all rhetorical practices, social movements, and cultural institutions. The Visual Rhetoric series brings together the work currently being accomplished by scholars in a wide variety of disciplines, including art theory, spatial rhetorics and architecture, rhetoric, cultural studies, media studies, neuropsychology, and cinema studies.

Mission

The Visual Rhetoric series of Parlor Press publishes works that address the following themes:

  • Political examinations of the role of the image in society;
  • Analyses of the production of images, objects, or visual phenomena in society;
  • Historical considerations of the reception of the image to particular times, places, and people;
  • Analyses of the relationship between representation, communication, and knowledge;
  • Studies of perception, reception, and interpretation of images;
  • Focused rhetorical analyses of various media and technologies, including, but not limited to television, streaming media, film, photography, generative AI, illustrated books, billboards, and propaganda.

Founding Series Editor: Marguerite Helmers

Submission and Contact Information

For full submission and prospectus guidelines, see our Submissions page. Queries should be directed to David Blakesley at editor@parlorpress.com.

Books in the Series

Rhetorics of Evidence: Science–Media–Culture, ed. Olaf Kramer and Michael Pelzer (2024)

The Afterlife of Discarded Objects: Memory and Forgetting in a Culture of Waste by Andrei Guruianu and Natalia Andrievskikh (2019)

Type Matters: The Rhetoricity of Letterforms, ed. by Christopher Scott Wyatt and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss (2018)

Inventing Comics: A New Translation of Rodolphe Töpffer’s Reflections on Graphic Storytelling, Media Rhetorics, and Aesthetic Practice, ed. and trans. by Sergio C. Figueiredo (2017)

Haptic Visions: Rhetorics of the Digital Image, Information, and Nanotechnology by Valerie L. Hanson (2015)

Locating Visual-Material Rhetorics: The Map, the Mill, and the GPS by Amy D. Propen (2012)

Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design, ed. by Leslie Atzmon (2011)

Writing the Visual: A Practical Guide for Teachers of Composition and Communication, ed. by Carol David and Anne R. Richards (2008)

Ways of Seeing, Ways of Speaking: The Integration of Rhetoric and Vision in Constructing the Real, ed. by Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Sue Hum, and Linda T. Calendrillo (2007)

Eye of a child

unsplash-logo Patrick Brinksma

Parlor Press is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats, including PDF, ePub, and Kindle. For submission information, see our Submissions page, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson SC 29621, or email David Blakesley <editor@parlorpress.com>.