Visual Rhetoric
Series Editor
David Blakesley
Clemson University
The 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.
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 Americans’ primary information sources (television and the World Wide Web) are strongly graphic (or visual) rather than print- or text-based in nature. This series will encourage scholars working in rhetoric, cultural studies, and communication to create new scholarly works that analyze visual phenomena. The intent is to assist in the development of a dedicated publication venue for visual rhetorical studies in order to establish coherence in what is currently a disparate discipline.
The previously unquestioned hegemony of verbal text is being 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. In the past decade, many scholars have called for collaborative ventures, in essence for disciplining of the study of visual information into a new field, variously labeled visual rhetoric, visual culture studies, or “image studies.” This proposed new field would bring together the work currently being accomplished by scholars in a wide variety of disciplines, including art theory, anthropology, rhetoric, cultural studies, psychology, and media 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, including, but not limited to television, film, photography, computer imaging, illustrated books, billboards, and propaganda.
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
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)
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 e-mail David Blakesley <editor@parlorpress.com>. 765.409.2649.